Estimation of incubation period distribution of COVID-19 using disease onset forward time: A novel cross-sectional and forward follow-up study

Qin, Jing; You, Chong; Lin, Qiushi; Hu, Taojun; Yu, Shicheng; Zhou, Xiao-Hua

We have proposed a novel, accurate low-cost method to estimate the incubation-period distribution of COVID-19 by conducting a cross-sectional and forward follow-up study. We identified those presymptomatic individuals at their time of departure from Wuhan and followed them until the development of symptoms. The renewal process was adopted by considering the incubation period as a renewal and the duration between departure and symptoms onset as a forward time. Such a method enhances the accuracy of estimation by reducing recall bias and using the readily available data. The estimated median incubation period was 7.76 days [95% confidence interval (CI): 7.02 to 8.53], and the 90th percentile was 14.28 days (95% CI: 13.64 to 14.90). By including the possibility that a small portion of patients may contract the disease on their way out of Wuhan, the estimated probability that the incubation period is longer than 14 days was between 5 and 10%.