Coronavirus patients are most infectious early on

• It also means that stopping the spread of the virus will be challenging, as people are most contagious before they may even know they have the virus.

Details: The study, which focused on confirmed coronavirus patients in Taiwan and their contacts, found that the novel coronavirus has a relatively short infectious period.

• The risk of transmission is highest around the time a patient becomes symptomatic, and decreases with time.
• "Because the onset of overt clinical symptoms, such as fever, dyspnea, and signs of pneumonia, usually occurred 5 to 7 days after initial symptom onset, the infection might well have been transmitted at or before the time of detection," the authors write.

Go deeper: The good and bad news about asymptomatic coronavirus cases