scholarly journals Estimating the distribution of the incubation period of 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infection between travelers to Hubei, China and non-travelers

Author(s):  
Char Leung

AbstractObjectivesAmid the continuing spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), the incubation period of COVID-19 should be regularly re-assessed as more information is available upon the increase in reported cases. The present work estimated the distribution of incubation periods of patients infected in and outside Hubei province of China.MethodsClinical data were collected from the individual cases reported by the media as they were not fully available on the official pages of the Chinese health authorities. MLE was used to estimate the distributions of the incubation period.ResultsIt was found that the incubation period of patients with no travel history to Hubei was longer and more volatile.ConclusionIt is recommended that the duration of quarantine should be extended to at least 3 weeks.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
ZHIYAO LI ◽  
Yu Zhang ◽  
Liuqing Peng ◽  
Rongrong Gao ◽  
Jiarui Jing ◽  
...  

While the novel coronavirus continues to spread worldwide, the reported incubation period has varied between studies and is imprecise due to limited data. A literature search with certain selection criteria was conducted on May 30, 2020. In total, sixty-four articles were included, and 854 individual-level data were extracted from 30 studies for pooled analysis. Of these studies, 72% of them reported a median or mean incubation period of 4-7 days, while our estimated median was 4.9 days (95% confidence interval [CI]: 4.6-5.2). However, the inclusion of 81 asymptomatic and presymptomatic patients, as well as 31 cases with incubation periods exceeding 14 days, led to our estimation of 97.5th percentile with 19.2 days (95% CI: 17.4-21.4), beyond the currently suggested 14-day quarantine period. Therefore, we appeal to prolong the quarantine duration, especially for areas that have insufficient testing resources, to protect susceptible populations from being infected.


2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 594-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
Char Leung

AbstractData collected from the individual cases reported by the media were used to estimate the distribution of the incubation period of travelers to Hubei versus that of nontravelers. Because a longer and more volatile incubation period has been observed in travelers, the duration of quarantine should be extended to 3 weeks.


PeerJ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. e9428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chon Fu Lio ◽  
Hou Hon Cheong ◽  
Chin Ion Lei ◽  
Iek Long Lo ◽  
Lan Yao ◽  
...  

Background The novel coronavirus diseases 2019 (COVID-19) caused over 1.7 million confirmed cases and cumulative mortality up to over 110,000 deaths worldwide as of 14 April 2020. A total of 57 Macao citizens were obligated to stay in Hubei province, China, where the highest COVID-19 prevalence was noted in the country and a “lockdown” policy was implemented for outbreak control for more than one month. They were escorted from Wuhan City to Macao via a chartered airplane organized by Macao SAR government and received quarantine for 14 days with none of the individual being diagnosed with COVID-19 by serial RNA tests from the nasopharyngeal specimens and sera antibodies. It was crucial to identify common characteristics among these 57 uninfected individuals. Methods A questionnaire survey was conducted to extract information such as behavior, change of habits and preventive measures. Results A total of 42 effective questionnaires were analyzed after exclusion of 14 infants and children with age under fifteen as ineligible for the survey and missing of one questionnaire, with a response rate of 97.7% (42 out of 43). The proportion of female composed more than 70% of this group of returners. The main reason for visiting Hubei in 88.1% of respondents was to visit relatives. Over 88% of respondents did not participate in high-risk activities due to mobility restriction. All (100%) denied contact with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 cases. Comparison of personal hygiene habits before and during disease outbreak showed a significant increase in practice including wearing a mask when outdoor (16.7% and 95.2%, P < 0.001) and often wash hands with soap or liquid soap (85.7% and 100%, P = 0.031).


Author(s):  
Meng Wang ◽  
Jingtao Qi

AbstractCoronavirus disease (COVID-19) broke out in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, in December 2019 and soon after Chinese health authorities took unprecedented prevention and control measures to curb the spreading of the novel coronavirus-related pneumonia. We develop a mathematical model based on daily updates of reported cases to study the evolution of the epidemic. With the model, on 95% confidence level, we estimate the basic reproduction number, R0 = 2.82 ± 0.11, time between March 19 and March 21 when the effective reproduction number becoming less than one, the epidemic ending after April 2 and the total number of confirmed cases approaching 14408 ± 429 on the Chinese mainland excluding Hubei province.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiao Fan Liu ◽  
Xiao-Ke Xu ◽  
Ye Wu

AbstractThe 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is pseudonymously linked to more than 100 million cases in the world as of January 2021. High-quality data are needed but lacking in the understanding of and fighting against COVID-19. We provide a complete and updating hand-coded line-list dataset containing detailed information of the cases in China and outside the epicenter in Hubei province. The data are extracted from public disclosures by local health authorities, starting from January 19. This dataset contains a very rich set of features for the characterization of COVID-19’s epidemiological properties, including individual cases’ demographic information, travel history, potential virus exposure scenario, contacts with known infections, and timelines of symptom onset, quarantine, infection confirmation, and hospitalization. These cases can be considered the baseline COVID-19 transmissibility under extreme mitigation measures, and therefore, a reference for comparative scientific investigation and public policymaking.


2020 ◽  
Vol 148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lin Yang ◽  
Jingyi Dai ◽  
Jun Zhao ◽  
Yunfu Wang ◽  
Pingji Deng ◽  
...  

Abstract A novel coronavirus disease, designated as COVID-19, has become a pandemic worldwide. This study aims to estimate the incubation period and serial interval of COVID-19. We collected contact tracing data in a municipality in Hubei province during a full outbreak period. The date of infection and infector–infectee pairs were inferred from the history of travel in Wuhan or exposed to confirmed cases. The incubation periods and serial intervals were estimated using parametric accelerated failure time models, accounting for interval censoring of the exposures. Our estimated median incubation period of COVID-19 is 5.4 days (bootstrapped 95% confidence interval (CI) 4.8–6.0), and the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles are 1 and 15 days, respectively; while the estimated serial interval of COVID-19 falls within the range of −4 to 13 days with 95% confidence and has a median of 4.6 days (95% CI 3.7–5.5). Ninety-five per cent of symptomatic cases showed symptoms by 13.7 days (95% CI 12.5–14.9). The incubation periods and serial intervals were not significantly different between male and female, and among age groups. Our results suggest a considerable proportion of secondary transmission occurred prior to symptom onset. And the current practice of 14-day quarantine period in many regions is reasonable.


Pathogens ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Firas A. Rabi ◽  
Mazhar S. Al Zoubi ◽  
Ghena A. Kasasbeh ◽  
Dunia M. Salameh ◽  
Amjad D. Al-Nasser

In December 2019, a cluster of fatal pneumonia cases presented in Wuhan, China. They were caused by a previously unknown coronavirus. All patients had been associated with the Wuhan Wholefood market, where seafood and live animals are sold. The virus spread rapidly and public health authorities in China initiated a containment effort. However, by that time, travelers had carried the virus to many countries, sparking memories of the previous coronavirus epidemics, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), and causing widespread media attention and panic. Based on clinical criteria and available serological and molecular information, the new disease was called coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19), and the novel coronavirus was called SARS Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), emphasizing its close relationship to the 2002 SARS virus (SARS-CoV). The scientific community raced to uncover the origin of the virus, understand the pathogenesis of the disease, develop treatment options, define the risk factors, and work on vaccine development. Here we present a summary of current knowledge regarding the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md. Asif Ahsan ◽  
Yongjing Liu ◽  
Cong Feng ◽  
Ralf Hofestädt ◽  
Ming Chen

Abstract Outbreaks of COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is still a threat to global human health. In order to understand the biology of SARS-CoV-2 and developing drug against COVID-19, a vast amount of genomic, proteomic, interatomic, and clinical data is being generated, and the bioinformatics researchers produced databases, webservers and tools to gather those publicly available data and provide an opportunity of analyzing such data. However, these bioinformatics resources are scattered and researchers need to find them from different resources discretely. To facilitate researchers in finding the resources in one frame, we have developed an integrated web portal called OverCOVID (http://bis.zju.edu.cn/overcovid/). The publicly available webservers, databases and tools associated with SARS-CoV-2 have been incorporated in the resource page. In addition, a network view of the resources is provided to display the scope of the research. Other information like SARS-CoV-2 strains is visualized and various layers of interaction resources is listed in distinct pages of the web portal. As an integrative web portal, the OverCOVID will help the scientist to search the resources and accelerate the clinical research of SARS-CoV-2.


Media narratives in popular culture often ascribe interchangeable characteristics to childhood and old age. In the manner of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By, the authors in this volume envision the presumed semblance between children and the elderly as a root metaphor that finds succinct articulation in the idea that “children are like old people” and vice versa. The volume explores the recurrent use of this root metaphor in literature and media from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The authors demonstrate how it shapes and is reinforced by a spectrum of media products from Western and East-Asian countries. Most the media products addressed were developed for children as their primary audience, and range from children’s classics such as Heidi to recent Dutch children’s books about euthanasia. Various authors also consider narratives produced either for adults (for instance, the TV series Mad Men, and the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) or for a dual audience (for example, the family film Paddington or The Simpsons). The diversity of these products in terms of geography, production date, and audience buttresses a broad comparative exploration of the connection between childhood and old age, allowing the authors to bring out culturally specific aspects and biases. Finally, since this book also unites scholars from a variety of disciplines (media studies, children’s literature studies, film studies, pedagogy, sociology), the individual chapters provide a range of methods for studying the connection between childhood and old age.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabiana Volpato ◽  
Daiana Lima-Morales ◽  
Priscila Lamb Wink ◽  
Julia Willig ◽  
Fernanda de-Paris ◽  
...  

RT-qPCR for SARS-CoV-2 is the main diagnostic test used to identify the novel coronavirus. Several countries have used large scale SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR testing as one of the important strategies for combating the pandemic. In order to process the massive needs for coronavirus testing, the usual throughput of routine clinical laboratories has reached and often surpassed its limits and new approaches to cope with this challenge must be developed. This study has aimed to evaluate the use pool of samples as a strategy to optimize the diagnostic of SARS-CoV-2 by RT-qPCR in a general population. A total of 220 naso/orofaryngeal swab samples were collected and tested using two different protocols of sample pooling. In the first protocol (Protocol A); 10 clinical samples were pooled before RNA extraction. The second protocol (Protocol B) consisted of pooling the already extracted RNAs from 10 individual samples. Results from Protocol A were identical (100% agreement) with the individual results. However, for results from Protocol B, reduced agreement (91%) was observed in relation to results obtained by individual testing. Inconsistencies observed were related to RT-qPCR results with higher Cycle Thresholds (Ct > 32.73). Furthermore, in pools containing more than one positive individual, the Ct of the pool was equivalent to the lowest Ct among the individual results. These results provide additional evidence in favor of the clinical use of pooled samples for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis by RT-qPCR and suggest that pooling of samples before RNA extraction is preferrable in terms of diagnostic yield.


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