New study on COVID-19 estimates 5.1 days for incubation period

Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. "New study on COVID-19 estimates 5.1 days for incubation period: Median time from exposure to symptoms affirms earlier estimates and supports CDC's current 14-day quarantine period." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 10 March 2020. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200310164744.htm>

An analysis of publicly available data on infections from the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, that causes the respiratory illness COVID-19 yielded an estimate of 5.1 days for the median disease incubation period, according to a new study led by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. This median time from exposure to onset of symptoms suggests that the 14-day quarantine period used by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for individuals with likely exposure to the coronavirus is reasonable.

The analysis suggests that about 97.5 percent of people who develop symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection will do so within 11.5 days of exposure. The researchers estimated that for every 10,000 individuals quarantined for 14 days, only about 101 would develop symptoms after being released from quarantine.