Demand for longer quarantine period among common and uncommon COVID-19 infections: a scoping review.

BACKGROUND: As one of the non-pharmacological interventions to control the transmission of COVID-19, determining the quarantine duration is mainly based on the accurate estimates of the incubation period. However, patients with coarse information of the exposure date, as well as infections other than the symptomatic, were not taken into account in previously published studies. Thus, by using the statistical method dealing with the interval-censored data, we assessed the quarantine duration for both common and uncommon infections. The latter type includes the presymptomatic, the asymptomatic and the recurrent test positive patients. METHODS: As of 10 December 2020, information on cases have been collected from the English and Chinese databases, including Pubmed, Google scholar, CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure) and Wanfang. Official websites and medias were also searched as data sources. All data were transformed into doubly interval-censored and the accelerated failure time model was applied. By estimating the incubation period and the time-to-event distribution of worldwide COVID-19 patients, we obtain the large percentiles for determining and suggesting the quarantine policies. For symptomatic and presymptomatic COVID-19 patients, the incubation time is the duration from exposure to symptom onset. For the asymptomatic, we substitute the date of first positive result of nucleic acid testing for that of symptom onset. Furthermore, the time from hospital discharge or getting negative test result to the positive recurrence has been calculated for recurrent positive patients. RESULTS: A total of 1920 laboratory confirmed COVID-19 cases were included. Among all uncommon infections, 34.1% (n = 55) of them developed symptoms or were identified beyond fourteen days. Based on all collected cases, the 95th and 99th percentiles were estimated to be 16.2 days (95% CI 15.5-17.0) and 22.9 days (21.7‒24.3) respectively. Besides, we got similar estimates based on merely symptomatic and presymptomatic infections as 15.1 days (14.4‒15.7) and 21.1 days (20.0‒22.2). CONCLUSIONS: There are a certain number of infected people who require longer quarantine duration. Our findings well support the current practice of the extended active monitoring. To further prevent possible transmissions induced and facilitated by such infectious outliers after the 14-days quarantine, properly prolonging the quarantine duration could be prudent for high-risk scenarios and in regions with insufficient test resources.

[Analysis on the etiological surveillance of influenza/novel influenza A (H1N1) from 2009-2010 in Shanxi Province].

OBJECTIVE: To study the epidemical characteristics of influenza/novel influenza A (H1N1) in Shanxi province from 2009 to 2010, and to provide scientific foundations for predicting and controlling the pandemic outbreak of influenza/novel influenza A (H1N1) effectively. METHODS: All samples were collected from cases that resemble influenza cases in sentinel hospital and influenza outbreak. The influenza were detected by PCR and isolated by MDCK cell culture method. Finally, Shanxi province surveillance data from May, 2009 to April, 2010 of influenza like illness (ILI) cases and pathogen detections were analyzed. RESULTS: In Shanxi province, influenza viruses kept activation in whole year. The predominant pandemic strain in 2009 was novel influenza A (H1N1) virus. The strong peak was around November, 2009 [positive rate: 58.1%, novel influenza A ( H1N1) of the total: 88.1%]. As well, the people infected influenza caused by novel influenza A (H1N1) were mainly under 59-year-old, and the higher positive rates were concentrated in the people from 5-year-old to 24-year-old. In 2010, influenza B (Victoria) viruses were mainly detected from clinical specimens and became the dominant strain. CONCLUSION: Surveillance of Influenza liue illnes, (ILI) and etiology, which can promptly reflect the influenza epidemic situation, play a significant role for understanding epidemic rule of influenza/novel influenza A (H1N1).