A team of Chinese researchers examined the medical records of 1,099 confirmed COVID-19 patients in China., which was first published online on Sunday, patients' incubation periods – the time between a patient's contact with the source of transmission and symptoms beginning to show – range from zero to 24 days.
“I’m skeptical that this is an important finding. I think this is an outlier rather than a common phenomenon,” he told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Tuesday. “What if it’s only one person?” Dr. Rau said. “If it’s a real rare outlier, to change the entire practice has real implications.” The WHO guideline has been used by many countries to justify 14-day quarantines. Canadians who returned to the country from Wuhan, China are being subjected to two weeks of quarantine at CFB Trenton in Ontario, while two-week quarantines have also been ordered on cruise ships where the virus has been detected.
Tam described the reports of patients with 24-day incubation periods as "outliers" and said they should be studied further, but may not represent a significant shift in thinking around the virus. As for fears about the new virus, Rau said “it’s a lot of brouhaha about a disease that may be mild for the majority” of those infected.