Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Apr;25(17):2000257.
doi: 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.17.2000257.

Estimating the generation interval for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) based on symptom onset data, March 2020

Tapiwa Ganyani  1 , Cécile Kremer  1 , Dongxuan Chen  2   3 , Andrea Torneri  1   4 , Christel Faes  1 , Jacco Wallinga  2   3 , Niel Hens  1   4
Affiliations

Estimating the generation interval for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) based on symptom onset data, March 2020

Tapiwa Ganyani et al. Euro Surveill. 2020 Apr.

Abstract

BackgroundEstimating key infectious disease parameters from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak is essential for modelling studies and guiding intervention strategies.AimWe estimate the generation interval, serial interval, proportion of pre-symptomatic transmission and effective reproduction number of COVID-19. We illustrate that reproduction numbers calculated based on serial interval estimates can be biased.MethodsWe used outbreak data from clusters in Singapore and Tianjin, China to estimate the generation interval from symptom onset data while acknowledging uncertainty about the incubation period distribution and the underlying transmission network. From those estimates, we obtained the serial interval, proportions of pre-symptomatic transmission and reproduction numbers.ResultsThe mean generation interval was 5.20 days (95% credible interval (CrI): 3.78-6.78) for Singapore and 3.95 days (95% CrI: 3.01-4.91) for Tianjin. The proportion of pre-symptomatic transmission was 48% (95% CrI: 32-67) for Singapore and 62% (95% CrI: 50-76) for Tianjin. Reproduction number estimates based on the generation interval distribution were slightly higher than those based on the serial interval distribution. Sensitivity analyses showed that estimating these quantities from outbreak data requires detailed contact tracing information.ConclusionHigh estimates of the proportion of pre-symptomatic transmission imply that case finding and contact tracing need to be supplemented by physical distancing measures in order to control the COVID-19 outbreak. Notably, quarantine and other containment measures were already in place at the time of data collection, which may inflate the proportion of infections from pre-symptomatic individuals.

Keywords: COVID-19; generation interval; incubation period; reproduction number; serial interval.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest: None declared.

Figures

Figure
Figure
Three possible coronavirus disease (COVID-19) transmission scenarios: (A) one symptomatic transmission scenario and (B) two pre-symptomatic transmission scenarios
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

References

    1. Dong E, Du H, Gardner L. An interactive web-based dashboard to track COVID-19 in real time. Lancet Infect Dis. 2020. Feb 19. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Held L, Hens N, O’Neill PD, Wallinga J. Handbook of infectious disease data analysis. 1st ed. New York: Chapman and Hall/CRC;2019.
    1. Li Q, Guan X, Wu P, Wang X, Zhou L, Tong Y, et al. Early Transmission Dynamics in Wuhan, China, of Novel Coronavirus-Infected Pneumonia. N Engl J Med. 2020;382(13):1199-207. 10.1056/NEJMoa2001316 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Backer JA, Klinkenberg D, Wallinga J. Incubation period of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) infections among travellers from Wuhan, China, 20-28 January 2020. Euro Surveill. 2020;25(5). 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.5.2000062 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Linton NM, Kobayashi T, Yang Y, Hayashi K, Akhmetzhanov AR, Jung SM, et al. Incubation period and other epidemiological characteristics of 2019 novel coronavirus infections with right truncation: A statistical analysis of publicly available case data. J Clin Med. 2020;9(2):538. 10.3390/jcm9020538 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources