Individual’s daily behaviour and intergenerational mixing in different social contexts of Kenya

Which are the characteristics of contact patterns in diverse social contexts in sub-Saharan Africa, and which types of individuals and daily behaviours may play a pivotal role in infection transmission to the most vulnerable, such as older adults? We address these questions using novel survey data on social contacts and time use from a sample of 1407 individuals from rural, urban, and slum settings in Kenya. In the rural setting, we observed the highest number of daily social contacts (11.56, SD = 0.23) and the highest share of intergenerational mixing with older adults (7.5% vs. around 4% in the urban settings). Intergenerational mixing with older adults was mainly reported by individuals spending their day mostly in the general community (around 8%) or at home (5.1%), rather than at work (1.5%) or at school (3.6%). These results are essential to define effective interventions to control infection transmission in the African context. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement This work has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement 283955 and has been partially supported by the Wellcome Trust (Grant # 203077/Z/16/Z). ### Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Yes The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below: The study was approved by the Kenya Medical Research Institute-Scientific Ethics Review Unit (KEMRI-SERU) and the University of Warwick Biomedical and Scientific Research Ethics Committee (BSREC). The parent study, DECIDE, had received ethical approval by the ERC Ethics Committee and the Ethics Committee of the Italian National Institute of Health. Individual consent was obtained from each of the study participants. All necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable. Yes The datasets and the source codes necessary for the reproducibility of our results are available at the following repository.