key: cord-0799551-ra5epmxn
authors: Song, Joon-Young; Yun, Jin-Gu; Noh, Ji-Yun; Cheong, Hee-Jin; Kim, Woo-Joo
title: Covid-19 in South Korea — Challenges of Subclinical Manifestations
date: 2020-04-06
journal: N Engl J Med
DOI: 10.1056/nejmc2001801
sha: 3c2384b150fe4afd52b805e49f934e711ad590e1
doc_id: 799551
cord_uid: ra5epmxn

nan

symptomatic patients with epidemiologic links. However, during the 2015 MERS-CoV outbreak in South Korea, nosocomial transmission persisted despite active quarantine measures. 2 Early data suggest that SARS-CoV-2 infection is more likely to be transmitted than MERS-CoV infection because of a higher estimated reproductive number (2.2 vs. 0.9) and a shorter estimated serial interval distribution (7.5 days vs. 12.6 days). 3, 4 Among the 28 infected patients reported here, Covid-19 was diagnosed by surveillance testing in South Korea in 3 who were asymptomatic. Although asymptomatic transmission has been suggested, it is uncertain when patients with Covid-19 are infectious during the incubation period or whether they are infectious primarily when they have symptoms. 5 This letter was published on April 6, 2020, at NEJM.org. 

Early transmission dynamics in Wuhan, China, of novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia

Preliminary epidemiological assessment of MERS-CoV outbreak in South Korea

Transmission of 2019-nCoV infection from an asymptomatic contact in Germany

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