[Nature] Temporal dynamics in viral shedding and transmissibility of COVID-19

15/04/2020

Nature, 15 April 2020

Xi He, Eric H. Y. Lau, Peng Wu, Xilong Deng, Jian Wang, Xinxin Hao, Yiu Chung Lau, Jessica Y. Wong, Yujuan Guan, Xinghua Tan, Xiaoneng Mo, Yanqing Chen, Baolin Liao, Weilie Chen, Fengyu Hu, Qing Zhang, Mingqiu Zhong, Yanrong Wu, Lingzhai Zhao, Fuchun Zhang, Benjamin J. Cowling, Fang Li & Gabriel M. Leung

Temporal dynamics in viral shedding and transmissibility of COVID-19

Hightlights:

Reported 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.
Infectiousness started from 2.3 days (95% CI, 0.8–3.0 days) before symptom onset and peaked at 0.7 days (95% CI, −0.2–2.0 days) before symptom onset
Viral shedding may begin 2 to 3 days before the appearance of the first symptoms. After symptom onset, viral loads decreased monotonically, consistent with two recent studies.
The infectiousness profile may more closely resemble that of influenza than of SARS.
For a reproductive number of 2.5, contact tracing and isolation alone are less likely to be successful if more than 30% of transmission occurred before symptom onset, unless >90% of the contacts can be traced.
With a substantial proportion of presymptomatic transmission, measures such as enhanced personal hygiene and social distancing for all would likely be the key instruments for community disease control.
More inclusive criteria for contact tracing to capture potential transmission events 2 to 3 days before symptom onset should be urgently considered for effective control of the outbreak.