Lau YC, Tsang TK, Kennedy-Shaffer L, et al. - It is important to account for the timing and process of data collection as it enables determination of more accurate estimates of the generation time and incubation period distributions and designing public health and social measures more efficiently.

• A statistical framework was developed to jointly determine the generation time and incubation period from human-to-human transmission pairs of COVID-19, accounting for sampling biases due to exponential growth of epidemic during data collection period.

• The framework was applied on a total of 80 laboratory-confirmed human-to-human transmission pairs. 

• Findings suggest the mean incubation period of 4.8 days, and the mean generation time of 5.7 days.

• The estimate based on the estimated generation time was 2.2.

• As per a simulation study, this approach could yield unbiased estimates, and be insensitive to the width of exposure windows.