Incubation period facts for kids
An incubation period is the time it takes between the day a person is infected with a pathogen (something that causes a disease, like a virus), and the day that the person starts having symptoms of the disease. For example, if a person is infected with the common cold, it usually takes about one to three days for the person to start having cold symptoms. This means that the common cold's incubation period is one to three days.
With some diseases, like Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV, the virus that causes AIDS), a person can still give other people HIV during the incubation period. Even though the person with HIV has no symptoms, the virus is making copies of itself during the incubation period.
What affects incubation periods
Many different things affect the incubation period for a disease. These things include:
- How much of the pathogen a person got
- Whether the person was vaccinated against this pathogen, and if they were, which vaccine was used
- How fast the pathogen makes copies of itself once it is in the body
- How strong the person's immune system is
Examples of incubation periods
Incubation periods are not exactly the same for everyone, because every person is different. Because of this, an incubation period is always written as a range (for example, "one to three days").
For many conditions, incubation periods are longer in adults than they are in children or infants.
Some diseases have very short incubation periods. Other diseases have incubation periods of many years. For example:
| Disease | Incubation Period |
|---|---|
| Cholera | 0.5 to 4 days |
| Influenza (flu) | 1 to 3 days |
| Dengue fever | 3 to 14 days |
| Chicken pox | 9 to 21 days |
| HIV | 2 to 3 weeks to months, or longer |
| Rabies | Usually 1 to 3 months, but can be less than 1 week or more than 1 year |
| Kuru disease | 10.3 to 13.2 years (average) |
See also
In Spanish: Período de incubación para niños
