Studies Estimate Incubation Time, Infectious Period of SARS-CoV-2

It takes a median of five days after infection to get sick, and patients shed the most coronavirus particles early in the illness, according to two new reports.

Written byShawna Williams
| 2 min read
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Patients have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 genetic material after apparently recovering from infection with the virus and being discharged from the hospital, according to media reports and a study published in JAMA last month. The phenomenon has sparked concerns that people could continue to infect others long after their illness had passed. But a preprint posted to medRxiv yesterday (March 9) suggests that patients with mild symptoms shed viable viral particles for 10 days or less after the onset of illness.

“This is a very important contribution to understanding both the natural history of Covid-19 clinical disease as well as the public health implications of viral shedding,” says Michael Osterholm, the director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy, in remarks to STAT. Osterholm was not involved in the study.

The work was conducted on nine patients in Germany. The authors ...

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Meet the Author

  • Shawna was an editor at The Scientist from 2017 through 2022. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Colorado College and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Previously, she worked as a freelance editor and writer, and in the communications offices of several academic research institutions. As news director, Shawna assigned and edited news, opinion, and in-depth feature articles for the website on all aspects of the life sciences. She is based in central Washington State, and is a member of the Northwest Science Writers Association and the National Association of Science Writers.

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