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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) emerged by end of 2019, and became a serious public health threat globally in less than half a year. The generation interval and latent period, though both are of importance in understanding the features of COVID-19 transmission, are difficult to observe, and thus they can rarely be learnt from surveillance data empirically. In this study, we develop a likelihood framework to estimate the generation interval and incubation period simultaneously by using the contact tracing data of COVID-19 cases, and infer the pre-symptomatic transmission proportion and latent period thereafter. We estimate the mean of incubation period at 6.8 days (95 %CI: 6.2, 7.5) and SD at 4.1 days (95 %CI: 3.7, 4.8), and the mean of generation interval at 6.7 days (95 %CI: 5.4, 7.6) and SD at 1.8 days (95 %CI: 0.3, 3.8). The basic reproduction number is estimated ranging from 1.9 to 3.6, and there are …