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People reduced their social lives by up to 75 percent during pandemic lockdowns

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Woman staying at home wearing covid pandemic mask, girl looking out balcony window wearing surgical mask

By Stephen Beech via SWNS

People reduced their social contact with others by up to 75 percent at the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, according to a new study.

Public health policies imposed during the pandemic aimed to curb virus transmission through reduced social contact.

However, the impact of the policies over time had not been quantified until now.

The findings, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, suggest that people in England reduced social contacts by up to 75 percent - and they limited contact with others even outside of lockdown periods.

To estimate social interactions in England from March 2020 to March last year, researchers conducted a study of more than 19,900 participants aged 18 to 59, as well as parents completing the survey on behalf of their children under age 18.

The participants voluntarily responded to online surveys about their demographics, behavior, and perceptions of personal risk with regard to the pandemic.

The researchers used statistical analyses to calculate the average number of daily contacts reported by participants.

They found that during the most restrictive lockdowns, adults reduced the number of people they were in contact with by 75 percent.

Study lead author Amy Gimma, a Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: "Throughout the year, during less stringent policies, people continued to reduce their social contacts, and only ever reached 50 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

“We launched the CoMix social contact and behavioral study on March 24, 2020, to capture the changes in social contacts, risk perception, and other behaviors.

"This study quantifies changes in epidemiologically relevant contact behavior for one full year of the COVID-19 pandemic in England and can be used to inform future outbreak response and can be applied to transmission of other infectious diseases, particularly for a large-scale pandemic”.

She added: “Social contacts play a key role in the transmission of respiratory viruses, such as COVID-19, and data from the CoMix survey helps researchers, policymakers, and the general public understand how people have changed their social contacts throughout the pandemic.

"Understanding how and where people are making the most contacts, such as at work or in educational settings, provides insight into where contacts can be reduced when we need to slow transmission.”

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