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Update (February 5): Health officials in Germany say the evidence reported in the New England Journal of Medicine around a case of asymptomatic transmission is inaccurate, and that the patient did indeed feel sick at the time she spread the virus.
Last weekend, Ma Xiaowei, director of China’s National Health Commission, announced that researchers believe the viral incubation period—the time it takes for an infected person to develop symptoms—could last up to 14 days for infections of the novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV. Xiaowei also said it appeared that at least some patients could transmit the virus during that time. Then yesterday (January 30), physicians described a case in The New England Journal of Medicine of a patient in Germany who apparently caught the virus from a business partner visiting from Shanghai while she was asymptomatic.
These revelations raise the possibility that people could spread the virus long ...
