Influenza poses a significant health threat to children, and schools may play a critical role in community outbreaks. Mathematical outbreak models require assumptions about contact rates and patterns among students, but the level of temporal granularity required to produce reliable results is unclear. We collected objective contact data from students aged 5-14 at an elementary school and middle school in the state of Utah, USA, and paired those data with a novel, data-based model of influenza transmission in schools. Our simulations produced within-school transmission averages consistent with published estimates. We compared simulated outbreaks over the full resolution dynamic network with simulations on networks with averaged representations of contact timing and duration. For both schools, averaging the timing of contacts over one or two school days caused average outbreak sizes to increase by 1-8

作者：Damon J A, Toth；Molly, Leecaster；Warren B P, Pettey；Adi V, Gundlapalli；Hongjiang, Gao；Jeanette J, Rainey；Amra, Uzicanin；Matthew H, Samore

来源：Journal of the Royal Society, Interface 2015 年 12卷 108期