Impact of weekday social contact patterns on the modeling of influenza transmission, and determination of the influenza latent period

► We assess the impact of weekday social contact patterns on influenza spread. ► Reduced contacts on weekends produce notable beats in epidemic curve. ► The weekday patterns are sensitive to the influenza latent period. ► 2009 A(H1N1) data from Santiago, Chile shows significant weekday patterns. ► We estimate the influenza latent period by fitting to the Chile data.