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The Contact matrix supplied by InfluSim is based on a study where the
weekly number of conversations between people of different
age classes was studied.
As the raw data were not fully consistent, the authors of the study first had
to take averages of the supplied frequencies, so that e.g. the same number of
conversations would happen between
children and working adults as
between working adults and
children. The resulting Contact matrix is used here to indicate
how often people of the different age classes contact each other.
Not every one of these contacts will necessarily lead to disease transmission.
In order to obtain the user-supplied
basic reproduction number (which summarizes the most important
epidemiologic parameters), the program calculates a common multiplication
factor for all the entries of the Contact matrix.
Thus the relative sizes of the entries in this table remain unchanged.
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Child-child contacts at school [%] determines what fraction of contacts among children who are in the same age-class usually happens in day care centers or schools.
When day care centers and schools are closed, the contacts among children within the the same age class are reduced by the factor Child-child contacts at school [%], whereas the contacts between children of different age classes are not affected.
The contact rate between (healthy) children and adults may increase due to increased contacts at home
(note that children who are severely sick do not attend day care centers and do not go to school).
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Child health care contact factor determines how the contacts between
children and adults (i.e. working
adults and elderly) change if
severely sick children are taken care of at home or in hospitals.
Thereby, a factor 1.0 means that the contacts between children and adults
contacts remain the same (no increase in contact), a factor of 2.0 means that
severely sick children double their contact rate with adults, etc.
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