How Long Does It Take to Get COVID-19? Here’s What a New Study Says

With COVID-19 spreading as widely as it is right now, you run the risk of meeting an infected person every time you go into a public place. But every trip to the pharmacy or meal in a restaurant doesn’t lead to a case of COVID-19. So what makes some exposures more harmful than others?

The length of time you spend around a person with COVID-19 seems to heavily influence your likelihood of getting sick, according to a recent Nature study that has been peer-reviewed but not fully edited. Most exposures that result in transmission last at least an hour, if not much longer, the researchers say.