The Joy of Sharing Science No.2, Everything you need to know about COVID-19 Biology Supplement

Joy of Sharing Science
Incubation Period
For the ongoing analysis of the cases, primarily, the scientists assumed that
the incubation period of COVID-19 follows a log-normal distribution as it is a
common denominator for most of the acute respiratory viral infections. In the
studies, the range of the incubation period differs from 1.3 - 11.5 days with a
confidence level of 95%. This record is dramatically higher than the other
viruses. While SARS’s mean incubation period is 8 days, it diverges for other
viruses with MERS’s being 12, Swine Flu’s being 8. Since the incubation period
represents the time from infection to appearance of symptoms, the scientists
may suggest that pre-symptomatic transmission might be a major driver of
the virus since that was the case for Spanish flu. However, the recordings
show that people shed COVID-19 around 24-48 hours prior to showing
symptoms, the incubation period doesn’t seem to make a major difference.
Transmissibility
The major transmission mode for all three viruses is human to human contact.
For COVID-19 droplet and contact transmission are the accepted ways of
contagion. There are suggested ways of transmission such as fecal
transmission which appeared to be infectious for SARS-CoV however not
proven either to be infectious or not for COVID-19. It has been seen that the
COVID-19 infected patients held the risk of transmission even before showing
the symptoms, therefore, increasing the chance of infection.
Population Immunity
While COVID-19 may result in hospitalization and other severe health issues,
primarily, it attacks different age groups differently due to underlying health
conditions. It is supported by recorded cases that COVID-19 causes more fatal
complications in the patient belonging to an age-group higher than 60 since they are
more likely to have a clinical background with severe chronic diseases like diabetes
and cardiovascular diseases. Due to aging, the immune system’s resilience is
lowered which causes other lethal complications. When it comes to children and
adults, it is seen that children may develop severe complications but more rarely
than adults. In most of the cases with children, they don’t show any evidence of