The influence of COVID-19 risk perception and vaccination status on the number of social contacts across Europe: insights from the CoMix study

BMC Public Health

Research

Philippe Beutels¹  W.John Edmunds²  Kerry L. M. Wong²  Christopher I. Jarvis²  Pietro Coletti³  Christel Faes³  Neilshan Loedy³  James Wambua³  Niel Hens⁴  Rene Niehus⁵  Rok Grah⁵  Bastian Prasse⁵  Frank Sandmann⁵  Helen Johnson⁶ 

[1] Centre for Health Economics Research and Modelling Infectious Diseases, Vaccine & Infectious Disease Institute, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium;The University of New South Wales, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, NSW 2033, Sydney, Australia;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;Data Science Institute, I-BioStat, Hasselt University, Hasselt, Belgium;Data Science Institute, I-BioStat, Hasselt University, Hasselt, Belgium;Centre for Health Economics Research and Modelling Infectious Diseases, Vaccine & Infectious Disease Institute, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium;European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), Gustav III:s Boulevard 40, 169 73, Solna, Sweden;European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), Gustav III:s Boulevard 40, 169 73, Solna, Sweden;Current Address: Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), European Commission, 1049, Brussels, Belgium;

关键词: Risk Perceptions;    SARS-CoV-2;    COVID-19;    Contact data;    Social contact behaviour;    Vaccination;    Pandemic;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12889-023-16252-z

 received in 2023-01-05, accepted in 2023-07-06,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe 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.MethodsWe 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.ResultsThe 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.ConclusionOur 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.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s) 2023

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