Estimation of the incubation period of COVID-19 in Vietnam

Objective To estimate the incubation period of Vietnamese confirmed COVID-19 cases. Methods Only confirmed COVID-19 cases who are Vietnamese and locally infected with available data on date of symptom onset and clearly defined window of possible SARS-CoV-2 exposure were included. We used three parametric forms with Hamiltonian Monte Carlo method for Bayesian Inference to estimate incubation period for Vietnamese COVID-19 cases. Leave-one-out Information Criterion was used to assess the performance of three models. Results A total of 19 cases identified from 23 Jan 2020 to 13 April 2020 was included in our analysis. Average incubation periods estimated using different distribution model ranged from 6.0 days to 6.4 days with the Weibull distribution demonstrated the best fit to the data. The estimated mean of incubation period using Weibull distribution model was 6.4 days (95% credible interval (CrI): 4.89-8.5), standard deviation (SD) was 3.05 (95%CrI 3.05-5.30), median was 5.6, ranges from 1.35 to 13.04 days (2.5th to 97.5th percentiles). Extreme estimation of incubation periods is within 14 days from possible infection. Conclusion This analysis provides evidence for an average incubation period for COVID-19 of approximately 6.4 days. Our findings support existing guidelines for 14 days of quarantine of persons potentially exposed to SARS-CoV-2. Although for extreme cases, the quarantine period should be extended up to three weeks.