Data Science Institute, I-BioStat, Hasselt University, Hasselt, Belgium.
Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases, Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, WC1E 7HT, London, UK.
BMC Public Health. 2023 Jul 13;23(1):1350. doi: 10.1186/s12889-023-16252-z.
The SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics have been greatly modulated by human contact behaviour. To curb the spread of the virus, global efforts focused on implementing both Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) and pharmaceutical interventions such as vaccination. This study was conducted to explore the influence of COVID-19 vaccination status and risk perceptions related to SARS-CoV-2 on the number of social contacts of individuals in 16 European countries.
We used data from longitudinal surveys conducted in the 16 European countries to measure social contact behaviour in the course of the pandemic. The data consisted of representative panels of participants in terms of gender, age and region of residence in each country. The surveys were conducted in several rounds between December 2020 and September 2021 and comprised of 29,292 participants providing a total of 111,103 completed surveys. We employed a multilevel generalized linear mixed effects model to explore the influence of risk perceptions and COVID-19 vaccination status on the number of social contacts of individuals.
The results indicated that perceived severity played a significant role in social contact behaviour during the pandemic after controlling for other variables (p-value < 0.001). More specifically, participants who had low or neutral levels of perceived severity reported 1.25 (95% Confidence intervals (CI) 1.13 - 1.37) and 1.10 (95% CI 1.00 - 1.21) times more contacts compared to those who perceived COVID-19 to be a serious illness, respectively. Additionally, vaccination status was also a significant predictor of contacts (p-value < 0.001), with vaccinated individuals reporting 1.31 (95% CI 1.23 - 1.39) times higher number of contacts than the non-vaccinated. Furthermore, individual-level factors played a more substantial role in influencing contact behaviour than country-level factors.
Our multi-country study yields significant insights on the importance of risk perceptions and vaccination in behavioral changes during a pandemic emergency. The apparent increase in social contact behaviour following vaccination would require urgent intervention in the event of emergence of an immune escaping variant.
SARS-CoV-2 的传播动态受到人类接触行为的极大调节。为了遏制病毒的传播，全球努力集中于实施非药物干预（NPIs）和药物干预，如疫苗接种。本研究旨在探索 COVID-19 疫苗接种状况和与 SARS-CoV-2 相关的风险认知对 16 个欧洲国家个人社交接触数量的影响。
我们使用在 16 个欧洲国家进行的纵向调查的数据来衡量大流行期间的社交接触行为。这些数据包括每个国家按性别、年龄和居住地区划分的代表性参与者小组。这些调查在 2020 年 12 月至 2021 年 9 月之间进行了多轮调查，共有 29292 名参与者提供了 111103 份完整的调查。我们采用多水平广义线性混合效应模型来探索风险认知和 COVID-19 疫苗接种状况对个人社交接触数量的影响。
结果表明，在控制其他变量后，感知严重程度在大流行期间的社交接触行为中起着重要作用（p 值<0.001）。更具体地说，与认为 COVID-19 是一种严重疾病的参与者相比，感知严重程度低或中性的参与者报告的接触次数分别多 1.25（95%置信区间（CI）1.13-1.37）和 1.10（95% CI 1.00-1.21）倍。此外，疫苗接种状况也是接触的一个显著预测因素（p 值<0.001），接种疫苗的个体报告的接触次数比未接种疫苗的个体多 1.31（95% CI 1.23-1.39）倍。此外，个体水平因素在影响接触行为方面比国家水平因素发挥更大的作用。
我们的多国研究提供了关于在大流行紧急情况下风险认知和疫苗接种在行为变化中的重要性的重要见解。接种疫苗后社交接触行为的明显增加需要在免疫逃逸变异出现时紧急干预。
