Association of protective behaviors with SARS-CoV-2 infection: Results from a longitudinal cohort study of adults in the San Francisco Bay Area

Ann Epidemiol. 2023 Jul 29:S1047-2797(23)00152-7. doi: 10.1016/j.annepidem.2023.07.009. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTIn an effort to decrease transmission during the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials encouraged masking, social distancing, and working from home, and restricted travel. However, many studies of the effectiveness of these measures had significant methodologic limitations. In this analysis, we used data from the TrackCOVID study, a longitudinal cohort study of a population-based sample of 3,846 adults in the San Francisco Bay Area, to evaluate the association between self-reported protective behaviors including masking, physical distancing, travel and working outside the home, and incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Participants without SARS-CoV2 infection were enrolled from August-December 2020 and followed monthly with testing and surveys (median of 4 visits). A total of 118 incident infections occurred (3.0% of participants). At baseline, 80.0% reported always wearing a mask; 56.0% avoided contact with non-household members some/most of the time; 9.6% traveled outside the state; and 16.0% worked 20 or more hours per week outside the home. These behaviors did not change markedly over time. Factors associated with incident infection included being Black or Latinx, having less than a college education, and having more household residents. The only behavioral factor associated with incident infection was working outside the home (aHR 1.6...
Source: Annals of Epidemiology - Category: Epidemiology Authors: Source Type: research