Is a 14-day quarantine period optimal for effectively controlling coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)?

  1. Xue Jiang
  2. Yawei Niu
  3. Xiong Li
  4. Lin Li
  5. Wenxiang Cai
  6. Yucan Chen
  7. Bo Liao
  8. Edwin Wang

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Abstract

Background

The outbreak of a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) disease (Covid-19) has become pandemic. To be more effectively controlling the disease, it is critical to set up an optimal quarantine period so that about 95% of the cases developing symptoms will be retained for isolation. At the moment, the WHO-established quarantine period is 14 days based on previous reports which had studied small sizes of hospitalized cases (10 and ∼100, respectively), however, over 80% of adult- and 95% of child-cases were not necessary to stay in hospitals, and therefore, had not been hospitalized. Therefore, we are questioning if the current-inferred median incubation time is representative for the whole Covid-19 population, and if the current quarantine period is optimal.

Methods

We compiled and analyzed the patient-level information of 2015 laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases including 99 children in 28 Chinese provinces. This cohort represents a wide-range spectrum of Covid-19 disease with both hospitalized and non-hospitalized cases.

Results

The full range of incubation periods of the Covid-19 cases ranged from 0 to 33 days among 2015 cases. There were 6 (0.13%) symptom-free cases including 4 females with a median age of 25.5 years and 2 males with a median age of 36 years. The median incubation period of both male and female adults was similar (7-day) but significantly shorter than that (9-day) of child cases (P=0.02). This cohort contained 4 transmission generations, and incubation periods of the cases between generations were not significantly different, suggesting that the virus has not been rapidly adapted to human beings. Interestingly, incubation periods of 233 cases (11.6%) were longer than the WHO-established quarantine period (14 days). Data modeling suggested that if adults take an extra 4-day or 7-day of isolation (i.e., a quarantine period of 18 or 21 days), 96.2% or 98.3%, respectively, of the people who are developing symptoms will be more effectively quarantined. Patients transmitted via lunch/dinner parties (i.e., gastrointestinal tract infection through oral transmission) had a significantly longer incubation period (9-day) than other adults transmitted via respiratory droplets or contaminated surfaces and objects (P<0.004).

Conclusions

The whole Covid-19 population including both hospitalized and non-hospitalized cases had a median incubation period of 7-day for adults, which is 1.8-day longer than the hospitalized cases reported previously. An extension of the adult quarantine period to 18 days or 21 days could be more effective in preventing virus-spreading and controlling the disease. The cases transmitted by lunch/dinner parties could be infected first in the gastrointestinal tract through oral transmission and then infected in the respiratory system so that they had a longer incubation period.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.15.20036533: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: All the data in this study have been de-identified and publicly available through local Chinese health agencies, therefore, patient consent and ethics approval was not required.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Limitations: Several limitations of this study are the following: (1) the cohort did not include patient-level information from the patients in Hubei province including Wuhan city, because they were exhaust-dealing with the outbreak and could not make the information in their official websites. (2) all the cases are Chinese patients.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.03.15.20036533v1 on medRxiv