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Chinese officials have warned the coronavirus incubation period could reach 24 days – eight times the median period for most cases.

The incubation period is the time is takes between being exposed to the virus and symptoms appearing.

New research, based on data gathered from more than 1000 coronavirus patients across China, has found that the incubation period could be significantly longer than the previously-believed 14 days.

The study was conducted by 37 researchers from Chinese hospitals and medical schools led by Dr Zhong Nanshan, a Chinese epidemiologist who discovered the SARS coronavirus in 2003.

It has not been evaluated by other scientists and the website says it should not be used to guide clinical practice.

An incubation period between three and 24 days means more people could have the coronavirus without displaying visible symptoms than previously thought.

The study found that fever occurred in just under 44 per cent of patients but later developed in almost 88 per cent following hospitalisation.

Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine at the University of East Anglia, said the findings were “definitely worrying”.

“The suggestion that the incubation period may extend up to 24 days is definitely worrying, especially for people currently in quarantine who may, therefore, expect to spend longer in isolation,” he said.

“However, the median incubation period remains very short at three days. This means that a half of people who will get ill will have developed their illness within three days of the initial contact and the proportion of people with the really long incubation periods will be very small.”

He also said it might be possible for patients to get infected multiple times.

“One of the issues with particularly long incubation periods is that it is often very difficult to exclude the possibility that the person had not had a second unrelated contact.

“Nevertheless, this new information is concerning and illustrates the need to be continuingly re-evaluating our risk assessments and advice.”

Experts from the World Health Organisation suggested that the 24-day incubation period could reflect a double exposure in a patient, adding that it was not considering changing the recommended quarantine time of two weeks.

Dr Michael Ryan, Executive Director of WHO Health Emergencies Programme, said patients with long incubation periods could be outliers.

“When we investigate we find, ‘Oh no,’ there was a second exposure a week later or two weeks later, and that’s when the infection occurred,” he said. “So we need to be really, really careful when we look at outliers.”