Search strategy and selection process
A systematic literature research of peer-reviewed publications on PubMed
and pre-print articles to identify case-series, observational or
experimental studies reporting incubation period of SARS-CoV-2 was
conducted with the following terms: ‘Novel Coronavirus’ OR ‘COVID*’ OR
‘Coronavirus’ OR ‘2019-nCoV’ OR ‘SARS-CoV-2’ OR ‘MERS-CoV’ OR ‘SARS’ OR
‘Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome’ AND ‘incubation’ OR ‘incubation
period’.
A reference list of review papers, pre-print reviews and epidemiological
reports from international and public health institutions were also
screened to identify other relevant studies reporting incubation period
of SARS-CoV-2 that may have been missed in the original search. The
search was carried out from inception to July 01, 2020.
Each article went through a screening process as follows: #1) Screening
of title and abstracts for articles reporting on SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19,
#2) Screening of full texts reporting incubation period.
Articles or abstracts in languages other than English were excluded.