Coronavirus infective during incubation is proven, but it can be very early, you start being infective the next day, a week before getting ill.

This has been bothering me since I read it, because it means this virus is so highly contagious that theres virtually no way to not get exposed unless you bunker down and avoid contact with anyone. This is so highly contagious that the only way to be safe is to stop having a normal life. I think this is key to understand the harshness of the Chinese strategy to control the spread.


A person can be infective during the incubation, weeks before getting ill, and anyone infected Can start infecting other people almost the day after getting infected.

This is what one can conclude after this article published in Jan 30th in the New England Journal of Medicine, based on observations of some cases detected in Germany after a Chinese executive from Wuhan infected two people directly and two others were infected by contact with the first infected German, in less than one week. None of them fell terribly ill, but the whole contagion happened during the incubation periods.

[link to www.nejm.org (secure)]