Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Jul 4, 2022
Open Peer Review Period: Jul 4, 2022 - Jul 18, 2022
Date Accepted: Oct 27, 2022
Date Submitted to PubMed: Nov 8, 2022
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
The association between clinical severity and incubation period of SARS-CoV-2 Delta variants: A retrospective observational study
ABSTRACT
Objectives: As a key epidemiological parameters characterizing the COVID-19 transmission dynamics, the incubation period plays an important role in informing the policy-making for epidemic control.
Methods:
Using contact tracing data of 353 COVID-19 cases in Jiangsu province, China, we estimated the distribution of incubation period of SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant. The stratification of age, sex and disease severity on the incubation period were investigated by multivariate logistic regression model with interval-censoring accounted. Findings: The mean incubation period of Delta variant was estimated at 6.64 days (95% credible interval [CrI]: 6.63-6.64). We found that female cases and cases with severe symptoms had relatively longer mean incubation periods than male and those with non-severe symptoms. Per one-day increase in the incubation period for the Delta variant was associated with a weak decrease in the probability of having severe illness in terms of an adjusted odds ratio of 0.88 (95% CrI: 0.71-1.07).
Conclusions:
These findings provided additional information on the characteristics of the incubation period of the Delta variant, highlighting the importance of continuously monitoring and quantifying the epidemiological feature of the emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants.
Citation
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Copyright
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