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social distancing

File:Social_distancing_queueing_for_the_supermarket_J._Sainsbury's_north_London_Coronavirus_Covid_19_pandemic_-_30_March_2020.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

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social distancing

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Also known as physical distancing, social distancings

reduction of human social interaction in an effort to prevent the spread of infectious disease

AI overview

Social distancing is the practice of reducing how often and how closely people interact with each other, done to help prevent infectious diseases from spreading. It matters because limiting contact between people can slow down or reduce transmission of disease, which helps protect both individuals and communities.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Research

15,099 papers

via PubMed

~33 min read

Encyclopedic overview

People socially distancing while queuing to enter a supermarket in London during the COVID-19 pandemic Without social distancing and other pandemic containment measures, pathogens can spread exponentially. This graphic shows how early adoption of containment measures tends to protect wider swaths of the population.

In public health, social distancing, also called physical distancing, is a set of non-pharmaceutical interventions or measures intended to prevent the spread of a contagious disease by maintaining a physical distance between people and reducing the number of times people come into close contact with each other. It usually involves keeping a certain distance from others (the distance specified differs from country to country and can change with time) and avoiding gathering together in larger groups.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “social distancing” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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