Publication date: Jul 01, 2024
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has highlighted the importance of contact tracing for epidemiological mitigation. Contact tracing interviews (CTIs) typically rely on episodic memory, which is prone to decline over time. Here, we provide a quantitative estimate of reporting decline for age- and gender-representative samples from the United Kingdom and Germany, emulating >15,000 CTIs. We find that the number of reported contacts declines as a power function of recall delay and is significantly higher for younger subjects and for those who used memory aids, such as a scheduler. We further find that these factors interact with delay: Older subjects and those who made no use of memory aids have steeper decline functions. These findings can inform epidemiological modeling and policies in the context of infectious diseases.
| Concepts | Keywords |
|---|---|
| Epidemiological | contact tracing |
| Germany | forgetting |
| Interviews | memory |
| Steeper | under-reporting |
Semantics
| Type | Source | Name |
|---|---|---|
| disease | IDO | contact tracing |
| disease | VO | time |
| disease | MESH | aids |
| disease | MESH | infectious diseases |