Examinations of COVID-19 Incubation Times

To confine the spread of an infectious disease, setting a sensible quarantine time is crucial. To this end, it is imperative to well understand the distribution of incubation times of the disease. Regarding the ongoing COVID­19 pandemic, the 14­days is currently taken as a quarantine time almost by all the places. However, it is unclear how likely it is for an exposed individual to show signs of illness after being quarantined for 14­days. To explore the plausibility of setting 14­days as a quarantine time of COVID­19, we analyze a dataset of 178 COVID­19 cases dated from January 20, 2020 to February 29, 2020, with the information of exposure periods and dates of symptom onset collected. To gain a good understanding of possible scenarios, we employ different models to analyze incubation times of COVID19 from different angles. Our findings suggest that the current recommended 14­day quarantine time is not long enough to control the probability of an early release of infected individuals to be small.