Changing contact patterns in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada in response to public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic

Publication date: Sep 17, 2025

The provincial government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada implemented a contact tracing program as part of a containment strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic. A high proportion of cases were detected and contact traced, and our analysis provides insights into secondary case distributions and contact patterns in Newfoundland and Labrador. We used a heuristic approximation of secondary cases to account for ambiguities in who infected whom. These approximate values provide an empirical distribution of secondary cases. These distributions are compared against the stringency of public health measures. Additionally, we visualised age- and contact-based patterns and compared these patterns with respect to stringency. The maximum number of contacts traced per week was 4,645 and the mean number of contacts traced per case was 12.5. Approximate 95% CIs of the effective reproduction number under Alert levels 2-4 were (1.02,1.21), (0.99,1.39), (0.84,1.06), and (1.20,1.47). We find that this level of contact tracing was sufficient, in combination with other public health interventions, to contain pandemic SARS-CoV-2 spread in Newfoundland and Labrador prior to the establishment of the Omicron variant. Understanding age-based contact patterns is necessary to describe disease spread and the risk of severe outcomes. A successful containment strategy requires that contact tracing capacity is not exceeded, making it necessary to understand the behaviour of high-contact individuals.

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