Europe PMC

This website requires cookies, and the limited processing of your personal data in order to function. By using the site you are agreeing to this as outlined in our privacy notice and cookie policy.

Temporal dynamics in viral shedding and transmissibility of COVID-19.

Xi He
Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Eric H Y Lau
World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China.
Peng Wu
World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China.
Xilong Deng
Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Jian Wang
Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Xinxin Hao
World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China.
Yiu Chung Lau
World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China.
Jessica Y Wong
World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China.
Yujuan Guan
Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Xinghua Tan
Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Xiaoneng Mo
Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Yanqing Chen
Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Baolin Liao
Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Weilie Chen
Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Fengyu Hu
Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Qing Zhang
Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Mingqiu Zhong
Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Yanrong Wu
Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Lingzhai Zhao
Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Fuchun Zhang
Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Benjamin J Cowling
World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China.
Fang Li
Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Gabriel M Leung
World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China.
Show less

Author information

Affiliations

  • 16 authors
    1. Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
  • 7 authors
    2. World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China.

ORCIDs linked to this article

Nature Medicine, 15 Apr 2020, 26(5):672-675
DOI: 10.1038/s41591-020-0869-5 PMID: 32296168 

A comment on this article appears in "Reply to: Is presymptomatic spread a major contributor to COVID-19 transmission?" Nat Med. 2020 Oct;26(10):1534-1535. A comment on this article appears in "Is presymptomatic spread a major contributor to COVID-19 transmission?" Nat Med. 2020 Oct;26(10):1531-1533. This article has been corrected. See Nat Med. 2020 Sep;26(9):1491-1493. Show all (5)

Abstract 

We report temporal patterns of viral shedding in 94 patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 and modeled COVID-19 infectiousness profiles from a separate sample of 77 infector-infectee transmission pairs. We observed the highest viral load in throat swabs at the time of symptom onset, and inferred that infectiousness peaked on or before symptom onset. We estimated that 44% (95% confidence interval, 25-69%) of secondary cases were infected during the index cases' presymptomatic stage, in settings with substantial household clustering, active case finding and quarantine outside the home. Disease control measures should be adjusted to account for probable substantial presymptomatic transmission.

Full text links 

Read article for free, from open access legal sources, via Unpaywall: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0869-5.pdfUnpaywall

Read article at publisher's site (DOI): 10.1038/s41591-020-0869-5

References 

Articles referenced by this article (1)

Citations & impact 

Impact metrics

1,957
Citations
Jump to Citations
1
Review
Jump to Reviews

Citations of article over time

Alternative metrics

Altmetric item for https://www.altmetric.com/details/79832281
Altmetric
Discover the attention surrounding your research
https://www.altmetric.com/details/79832281

Smart citations by scite.ai
Smart citations by scite.ai include citation statements extracted from the full text of the citing article. The number of the statements may be higher than the number of citations provided by EuropePMC if one paper cites another multiple times or lower if scite has not yet processed some of the citing articles.
Explore citation contexts and check if this article has been supported or disputed.
https://scite.ai/reports/10.1038/s41591-020-0869-5

Supporting
Mentioning
Contrasting
153
3193
11

Article citations

Go to all (1,957) article citations

Other citations

Reviews 

Reviews, recommendations & commentary from expert sources.

Similar Articles 

To arrive at the top five similar articles we use a word-weighted algorithm to compare words from the Title and Abstract of each citation.

Funding 

Funders who supported this work.

Department of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province

    Food and Health Bureau of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region | Health and Medical Research Fund