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Social interaction key to pandemic spread

Epidemiology - UK Researchers have launched a simple online survey that will help scientists understand the speed with which killer diseases such as the swine flu outbreak could spread through the British population.

The study - launched by researchers at the University of Warwick and Liverpool University - will provide crucial information that will that will help policy makers and UK health authorities understand the speed with which these diseases could spread.

The project, funded by the Medical Research Council, is spearheaded by Professor Matthew Keeling, a government advisor and mathematical biologist at the University of Warwick who is a specialist in human and livestock diseases, and Dr Jonathan Read from the University of Liverpool, who is researching the transmission and evolution of infectious diseases.

Professor Keeling said: "We need to know the patterns of social interactions to enable us to better predict and control the spread of infections - such as pandemic flu," said Professor Keeling. "Surprisingly there's a lot known about people's sexual contacts - but there's little or no data about routine social or physical contact with others. No other country is carrying out this research in this much detail.

"There are understandable growing concerns about the current situation and a possible pandemic; we need to find out as much as possible about social contacts."

The survey involves a questionnaire on the Internet at www.contactsurvey.org and 100,000 printed versions being posted to schools and the public.

Dr Read, who has just returned from a project studying the spread of flu in China, said: "The UK leads the world in this field of research. We will be sharing our findings with scientific communities around the globe. The questionnaire is easy to complete and asks participants to list all the people they met on a particular day, detailing for how long, whether at home, in the workplace or socially, how often they met and, most importantly, how many of those people they actually touched."

"From the results we will have a much better idea of how quickly an epidemic could spread, and the measures that would be needed to control it."

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