ArticleThe Journal of infection2020
Rapid asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19 during the incubation period demonstrating strong infectivity in a cluster of youngsters aged 16-23 years outside Wuhan and characteristics of young patients with COVID-19: A prospective contact-tracing study.
Article in The Journal of infection, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 202 papers, 15 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
202 citing papers in PubMed, 15 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 367 citations in OpenAlex.
- Assessing changes in incubation period, serial interval, and generation time of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC medicine · 2023Pooled it
- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Setting-specific Transmission Rates: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2021Pooled it
- Ophthalmology-focused publications and findings on COVID-19: A systematic review.European journal of ophthalmology · 2021Pooled it
- The incubation period during the pandemic of COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Systematic reviews · 2021Pooled it
- The role of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infection in SARS-CoV-2 transmission-a living systematic review.Clinical microbiology and infection : the official publication of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases · 2021Pooled it
- Time-varying Reproductive Rates for SARS-CoV-2 and its Implications as a Means of Disease Surveillance on Lockdown Restrictions.Annals of surgery · 2021Pooled it
- Intra-Household and Close-Contact SARS-CoV-2 Transmission Among Children - a Systematic Review.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2021Pooled it
- Cluster infections play important roles in the rapid evolution of COVID-19 transmission: A systematic review.International journal of infectious diseases : IJID : official publication of the International Society for Infectious Diseases · 2020Pooled it
- Clinical Characteristics of Asymptomatic and Symptomatic Pediatric Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): A Systematic Review.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2020Pooled it
- The incidence of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 among asymptomatic patients: A systematic review.International journal of infectious diseases : IJID : official publication of the International Society for Infectious Diseases · 2020Pooled it
- Children are unlikely to be the main drivers of the COVID-19 pandemic - A systematic review.Acta paediatrica (Oslo, Norway : 1992) · 2020Pooled it
- What we know so far about Coronavirus Disease 2019 in children: A meta-analysis of 551 laboratory-confirmed cases.Pediatric pulmonology · 2020Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Effectiveness of Surgical Face Masks in Reducing Acute Respiratory Infections in Non-Healthcare Settings: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Frontiers in medicine · 2020Pooled it
- Global prevalence and pathogenesis of headache in COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis.F1000Research · 2020Pooled it
- Leukocyte telomere dynamic change in patients with mild to moderate covid-19 during three weeks of follow-up: Relation with therapy.Journal of medical biochemistry · 2026Article
- Use of anti-nucleocapsid antibody detection as a marker of SARS-CoV-2 infection in healthcare professionals: a longitudinal seroprevalence study at a university hospital in Catalonia, Spain.BMC infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Real-time spatiotemporal tracking of infectious outbreaks in confined environments with a host-pathogen agent-based system.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Excess mortality in older adults and cumulative excess mortality across all ages during the COVID-19 pandemic in the 20 countries with the highest mortality rates worldwide.Osong public health and research perspectives · 2025Article
- Safety of Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 Prophylaxis in Healthcare Workers: A Cross-Sectional Study.Cureus · 2025Article
142 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe outbreak of coronavirus-disease-2019 (COVID-19) has rapidly spread to many places outside Wuhan. Previous studies on COVID-19 mostly included older hospitalized-adults. Little information on infectivity among and characteristics of youngsters with COVID-19 is available.
methodsA cluster of 22 close-contacts of a 22-year-old male (Patient-Index) including youngsters with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 and hospitalized close-contacts testing negative for severe-acute-respiratory-syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) in Anhui Province, China was prospectively-traced.
resultsSince January 23, 2020, we enrolled a cluster of eight youngsters with COVID-19 (median age [range], 22 [16-23] years; six males) originating from Patient-Index returning from Wuhan to Hefei on January 19. Patient-Index visited his 16-year-old female cousin in the evening on his return, and met 15 previous classmates in a get-together on January 21. He reported being totally asymptomatic and were described by all his contacts as healthy on January 19-21. His very first symptoms were itchy eyes and fever developed at noon and in the afternoon on January 22, respectively. Seven youngsters (his cousin and six classmates) became infected with COVID-19 after a-few-hour-contact with Patient-Index. None of the patients and contacts had visited Wuhan (except Patient-Index), or had any exposure to wet-markets, wild-animals, or medical-institutes within three months. For affected youngsters, the median incubation-period was 2 days (range, 1-4). The median serial-interval was 1 day (range, 0-4). Half or more of the eight COVID-19-infected youngsters had fever, cough, sputum production, nasal congestion, and fatigue on admission. All patients had mild conditions. Six patients developed pneumonia (all mild; one bilateral) on admission. As of February 20, four patients were discharged.
conclusionsSARS-CoV-2-infection presented strong infectivity during the incubation-period with rapid transmission in this cluster of youngsters outside Wuhan. COVID-19 developed in these youngsters had fast onset and various nonspecific atypical manifestations, and were much milder than in older patients as previously reported.
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