Previously submitted to: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (no longer under consideration since Jun 30, 2022)
Date Submitted: Jan 18, 2022
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Risk assessment for SARS-CoV-2 Delta Variant B.1.617.2 transmission in public places: a retrospective study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Public places that COVID-19 patients visited are the trigger of secondary transmission. The severity of symptoms, expectoration symptoms, adolescents ,and high virus load are the risk factors for transmission. Transmission is also related to environmental factors. However, there was a lack of comprehensive evaluation of transmission in public places that COVID-19 patients visited.
Objective:
The aim of this study was to explore risk factors for transmission in public places, providing a basis for assessing the risk of transmission of COVID-19 and identifying priority public places.
Methods:
A retrospective study of 219 public places involved in 69 confirmed cases in Guangzhou, Zhanjiang and Foshan, China. We were concerned about the secondary transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the public places. Characteristics and behaviors of relevant places, primary cases and frequency of exposure were analyzed to explore the risk factors for secondary transmission.
Results:
The rate of transmission in public places that COVID-19 patient visited was 10.5% (23/219). The risk of transmission in public places with the rate of wearing mask > 80% is lower, and the risk of transmission in public places visited by the primary case with cough symptoms was 14.5 times higher than that of the asymptomatic patients. For each increase in the number of effective exposure, the risk of transmission increased 1.5 times.
Conclusions:
The study confirmed the highest transmission risk before the onset of COVID-19. High exposure times and the initial case with cough symptoms could aggregate the transmission. The use of masks is effective in preventing COVID-19. Restaurants were places with high risk of transmission.
Citation
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