SynthesisInfectious diseases of poverty2021
The incubation period of COVID-19: a global meta-analysis of 53 studies and a Chinese observation study of 11 545 patients.
Synthesis in Infectious diseases of poverty, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 44 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
44 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- 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
- Estimation of the COVID-19 mean incubation time: Systematic review, meta-analysis, and sensitivity analysis.Journal of medical virology · 2022Pooled it
- Inferring variant-specific effective reproduction numbers from combined case and sequencing data.eLife · 2026Article
- Awareness of human metapneumovirus (hMPV) among healthcare professionals in Libya.The Journal of the Egyptian Public Health Association · 2026Article
- Assessing the usefulness of digital contact tracing using real-world contact data.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Assessing the impact of interregional mobility on COVID19 spread in Spain using transfer entropy.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Why gender and sex matter in infectious disease modelling: A conceptual framework.SSM - population health · 2025Article
- Mathematical Contact Tracing Models for the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review of the Literature.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Role of digital technology in epidemic control: a scoping review on COVID-19 and Ebola.BMJ open · 2025Article
- Scoping review about pathogenesis, risk factors, and treatment of venous and arterial thrombosis in coronavirus infection.Frontiers in cardiovascular medicine · 2025Review
- Article
- Precision nutrition to reset virus-induced human metabolic reprogramming and dysregulation (HMRD) in long-COVID.NPJ science of food · 2024Review
- Examining the Influence of Imbalanced Social Contact Matrices in Epidemic Models.American journal of epidemiology · 2024Article
- Risk perceptions and behaviors concerning rural tourism and economic-political drivers of COVID-19 policy in 2020.PloS one · 2024Article
- The Epidemiological and Economic Impact of COVID-19 in Kazakhstan: An Agent-Based Modeling.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Application of distributed lag models and spatial analysis for comparing the performance of the COVID-19 control decisions in European countries.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic using a compartmental model with time-varying parameters fitted by a genetic algorithm.Expert systems with applications · 2023Article
- The lockdown and vaccination distribution in Thailand's COVID-19 epidemic: A model study.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2023Article
- SARS-CoV-2 incubation period across variants of concern, individual factors, and circumstances of infection in France: a case series analysis from the ComCor study.The Lancet. Microbe · 2023Article
- Seeing the forest and the trees: Holistic view of social distancing on the spread of COVID-19 in China.Applied geography (Sevenoaks, England) · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe incubation period is a crucial index of epidemiology in understanding the spread of the emerging Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In this study, we aimed to describe the incubation period of COVID-19 globally and in the mainland of China.
methodsThe searched studies were published from December 1, 2019 to May 26, 2021 in CNKI, Wanfang, PubMed, and Embase databases. A random-effect model was used to pool the mean incubation period. Meta-regression was used to explore the sources of heterogeneity. Meanwhile, we collected 11 545 patients in the mainland of China outside Hubei from January 19, 2020 to September 21, 2020. The incubation period fitted with the Log-normal model by the coarseDataTools package.
resultsA total of 3235 articles were searched, 53 of which were included in the meta-analysis. The pooled mean incubation period of COVID-19 was 6.0 days (95% confidence interval [CI] 5.6-6.5) globally, 6.5 days (95% CI 6.1-6.9) in the mainland of China, and 4.6 days (95% CI 4.1-5.1) outside the mainland of China (P = 0.006). The incubation period varied with age (P = 0.005). Meanwhile, in 11 545 patients, the mean incubation period was 7.1 days (95% CI 7.0-7.2), which was similar to the finding in our meta-analysis.
conclusionsFor COVID-19, the mean incubation period was 6.0 days globally but near 7.0 days in the mainland of China, which will help identify the time of infection and make disease control decisions. Furthermore, attention should also be paid to the region- or age-specific incubation period.
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