SickMix: Temporal Changes in Social Contact Patterns among People with Acute Infection and Their Close Contacts

In 1,000 medically attended acute gastroenteritis and acute respiratory infection cases in the northwestern United States (2024–2025), contacts rose from 6.7 to 15.3 over two weeks after peak illness.

• Why it matters: Empirical evidence on how social interactions change during acute infection is limited, yet these temporal contact shifts can affect transmission estimates and how interventions are evaluated.
• What they did: The study followed 1,000 cases and 709 household members longitudinally, quantifying illness-associated contact changes by age and social setting across the index date and subsequent weeks.
• The result: Contacts increased after peak illness (6.7 on the index date to 13.1 after one week and 15.3 after two weeks), with the biggest time-related rise among school-aged children (5–17 years) via more same-age contacts.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.