1. Estimation of incubation period distribution of COVID-19 using disease onset forward time: A novel cross-sectional and forward follow-up study.
- Author
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Qin J, You C, Lin Q, Hu T, Yu S, and Zhou XH
- Subjects
- Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, COVID-19, Child, Child, Preschool, China epidemiology, Coronavirus Infections virology, Cross-Sectional Studies, Female, Follow-Up Studies, Humans, Infant, Infant, Newborn, Male, Middle Aged, Pandemics, Pneumonia, Viral virology, SARS-CoV-2, Young Adult, Betacoronavirus, Coronavirus Infections epidemiology, Coronavirus Infections transmission, Infectious Disease Incubation Period, Models, Statistical, Pneumonia, Viral epidemiology, Pneumonia, Viral transmission
- Abstract
We have proposed a novel, accurate low-cost method to estimate the incubation-period distribution of COVID-19 by conducting a cross-sectional and forward follow-up study. We identified those presymptomatic individuals at their time of departure from Wuhan and followed them until the development of symptoms. The renewal process was adopted by considering the incubation period as a renewal and the duration between departure and symptoms onset as a forward time. Such a method enhances the accuracy of estimation by reducing recall bias and using the readily available data. The estimated median incubation period was 7.76 days [95% confidence interval (CI): 7.02 to 8.53], and the 90th percentile was 14.28 days (95% CI: 13.64 to 14.90). By including the possibility that a small portion of patients may contract the disease on their way out of Wuhan, the estimated probability that the incubation period is longer than 14 days was between 5 and 10%., (Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).)
- Published
- 2020
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