With the development of its variants, the corona virus has apparently become “faster” in triggering Covid-19. Chinese biostatisticians have now analyzed 142 studies on the question of the incubation period. The result: While the average incubation period for the alpha variants was around five days, according to a new study at Omikron it fell to 3.42 days.
Easier transmission
Four to five, later five to six days – that was what experts said at the beginning of the pandemic regarding the “hatching” of an infection until the first symptoms appeared.
This is particularly important because those affected are already contagious during this time and the necessary quarantine times can then be calculated. Therefore, numerous scientific studies on this topic have been carried out worldwide since 2020. Yu Wu from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Peking University and his co-authors systematically combed through 142 studies up to March 2022 on the incubation period of SARS-CoV-2 and classified them according to the prevailing virus variants.
According to the scientists, the trend is clear: “The results indicate that the virus has constantly evolved and mutated throughout the Covid 19 pandemic. There were variants with varying degrees of ease of transmission and varying degrees of disease induction.”
Older people get sick earlier
The incubation period for all variants of the Covid-19 pathogen was 6.57 days. The range was enormous with 1.80 to 18.87 days. Older people (over 60) fell ill an average of 7.42 days after infection, while the average incubation period for people under the age of 18 was 8.82 days.
Source: Nachrichten
