The DOI matches its Crossref record; 26 of the 26 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Incubation Period of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) From Publicly Reported Confirmed Cases: Estimation and Application
Open accessPublished version of a preprint
Abstract
BACKGROUND: A novel human coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was identified in China in December 2019. There is limited support for many of its key epidemiologic features, including the incubation period for clinical disease (coronavirus disease 2019 [COVID-19]), which has important implications for surveillance and control activities. OBJECTIVE: To estimate the length of the incubation period of COVID-19 and describe its public health implications. DESIGN: Pooled analysis of confirmed COVID-19 cases reported between 4 January 2020 and 24 February 2020. SETTING: News reports and press releases from 50 provinces, regions, and countries outside Wuhan, Hubei province, China. PARTICIPANTS: Persons with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection outside Hubei province, China. MEASUREMENTS: Patient demographic characteristics and dates and times of possible exposure, symptom onset, fever onset, and hospitalization. RESULTS: There were 181 confirmed cases with identifiable exposure and symptom onset windows to estimate the incubation period of COVID-19. The median incubation period was estimated to be 5.1 days (95% CI, 4.5 to 5.8 days), and 97.5% of those who develop symptoms will do so within 11.5 days (CI, 8.2 to 15.6 days) of infection. These estimates imply that, under conservative assumptions, 101 out of every 10 000 cases (99th percentile, 482) will develop symptoms after 14 days of active monitoring or quarantine. LIMITATION: Publicly reported cases may overrepresent severe cases, the incubation period for which may differ from that of mild cases. CONCLUSION: This work provides additional evidence for a median incubation period for COVID-19 of approximately 5 days, similar to SARS. Our results support current proposals for the length of quarantine or active monitoring of persons potentially exposed to SARS-CoV-2, although longer monitoring periods might be justified in extreme cases. PRIMARY FUNDING SOURCE: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The cited source says what the claim attributes to it.
In the citing paper
“The cumulative incidence of Covid-19 cases over time among placebo and vaccine recipients begins to diverge by 12 days after the first dose, 7 days after the estimated median viral incubation period of 5 days,10 indicating the early onset of a partially protective effect of immunization.”
From Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine (2020) · cites this paper as [10]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China
Huang, C., Wang, Y., Li, X., Ren, L., Zhao, J., Hu, Y., Zhang, L., Fan, G., Xu, J., Gu, X., et al. (2020) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(20)30183-5 · Cited by 48,884
A novel coronavirus from patients with pneumonia in China, 2019
Zhu, N., Zhang, D., Wang, W., Li, X., Yang, B., Song, J., Zhao, X., Huang, B., Shi, W., Lu, R., et al. (2020) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmoa2001017 · Cited by 28,244
Early transmission dynamics in Wuhan, China, of novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia
Li, Q., Guan, X., Wu, P., Wang, X., Zhou, L., Tong, Y., Ren, R., Leung, K. S. M., Lau, E. H. Y., Wong, J. Y., et al. (2020) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmoa2001316 · Cited by 16,575
Chan, J., Yuan, S.-F., Kok, K.-H., To, K., Chu, H., Yang, J., Xing, F., Liu, J.-L., Yip, C., Poon, R., et al. (2020) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(20)30154-9 · Cited by 8,450
Transmission of 2019-nCoV Infection from an Asymptomatic Contact in Germany
Rothe, C., Schunk, M., Sothmann, P., Bretzel, G., Froeschl, G., Wallrauch, C., Zimmer, T., Thiel, V., Jänke, C., Guggemos, W., et al. (2020) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmc2001468 · Cited by 4,211
CDC Weekly, C., & The Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Emergency Response Epidemiology Team (2020) · China CDC Weekly · doi:10.46234/ccdcw2020.032 · Cited by 2,889
Backer, J. A., Klinkenberg, D., & Wallinga, J. (2020) · Eurosurveillance · doi:10.2807/1560-7917.es.2020.25.5.2000062 · Cited by 1,546
Linton, N. M., Kobayashi, T., Yang, Y., Hayashi, K., Akhmetzhanov, A. R., Jung, S.-M., Yuan, B., Kinoshita, R., & Nishiura, H. (2020) · Journal of Clinical Medicine · doi:10.3390/jcm9020538 · Cited by 1,376
The Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Emergency Response Epidemiology Team (2020) · PubMed · Cited by 1,277
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Varia M, 2003, CMAJ, 169, 285
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine
Polack, F. P., Thomas, S. J., Kitchin, N., Absalon, J., Gurtman, A., Lockhart, S., Perez, J. L., Pérez Marc, G., Moreira, E. D., Zerbini, C., et al. (2020) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmoa2034577 · Cited by 14,592
WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic.
Cucinotta, D., & Vanelli, M. (2020) · Acta bio-medica dell'Ateneo parmense/Acta biomedica · doi:10.23750/abm.v91i1.9397 · Cited by 8,022
Wiersinga, W. J., Rhodes, A., Cheng, A. C., Peacock, S. J., & Prescott, H. C. (2020) · JAMA · doi:10.1001/jama.2020.12839 · Cited by 4,609
The trinity of COVID-19: immunity, inflammation and intervention
Tay, M. Z., Poh, C. M., Rénia, L., MacAry, P. A., & Ng, L. F. P. (2020) · Nature Reviews Immunology · doi:10.1038/s41577-020-0311-8 · Cited by 4,360
Features, Evaluation and Treatment Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Cascella, M., Rajnik, M., Cuomo, A., Dulebohn, S. C., & Napoli, R. D. (2020) · StatPearls · Cited by 3,351
Metadata
- Authors
- Lauer, S. A., Grantz, K. H., Bi, Q., Jones, F. K., Zheng, Q., Meredith, H. R., Azman, A. S., Reich, N. G., & Lessler, J.
- Affiliations
- Johns Hopkins University (US)
- University of Massachusetts Amherst (US)
- Corresponding author
- Lessler, Justin
- ORCID
- Venue
- Annals of Internal Medicine
- Publisher
- American College of Physicians
- Published
- 2020-05-05
- Volume
- 172
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 577-582
- ISSN
- 0003-4819 (ISSN-L)
- 1539-3704
- PMC
- PMC7081172
- OpenAlex
- W3010233963
- Cited by
- 5,970
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 64 · 2025: 131 · 2024: 249 · 2023: 453 · 2022: 938 · 2021: 1871 · 2020: 2257
- FWCI
- 219.21
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nd
- Locations
- Annals of Internal Medicine (publishedVersion)
- medRxiv (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nd)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst (University of Massachusetts Amherst) (submittedVersion)
- PUBLISSO (German National Library of Medicine) (submittedVersion)
- ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst (University of Massachusetts Amherst) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung
- Johns Hopkins University
- National Institutes of Health
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R35GM119582)
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
- Fogarty International Center
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Modeling and Simulation › COVID-19 epidemiological studies
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Infectious Diseases › SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Infectious Diseases › COVID-19 Clinical Research Studies
- Keywords
- COVID-19 pandemic, SARS-CoV-2, incubation period, symptom onset, quarantine duration, active monitoring, confirmed cases, disease surveillance, disease control
- MeSH terms
- Betacoronavirus, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Adult, China, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Pneumonia, Viral, Retrospective Studies, Coronavirus Infections, Infectious Disease Incubation Period, Pandemics
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
