New Studies Reveal How Long Coronavirus Stays on Contaminated Surfaces

Due to many concerns about how long the novel coronavirus survives on surfaces, China's central bank has taken measures to deep clean and destroy its cash. While it is unknown exactly how long the novel coronavirus can linger on contaminated surfaces, some researchers are “finding clues by studying the elusive behaviors of other coronaviruses,” as reported by CNN.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as “a respiratory illness that can spread from person to person. The virus that causes COVID-19 is a novel coronavirus that was first identified during an investigation into an outbreak in Wuhan, China.”

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It is still not confirmed what animal may have caused the current novel coronavirus outbreak, but according to CNN, “studies have suggested that people were infected with the coronavirus MERS, or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, after coming in contact with camels, and scientists have suspected that civet cats were to blame for SARS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.”

Human coronaviruses like MERS and SARS have been found to stay on surfaces such as metal, glass, or plastic surfaces for as long as nine days if that surface had not been disinfected, according to research published in The Journal of Hospital Infection.

The research says that cleaning with common household products can make a difference. Human coronaviruses “can be efficiently inactivated by surface disinfection procedures with 62-71% ethanol, 0.5% hydrogen peroxide or 0.1% sodium hypochlorite” or bleach within one minute.

“Based on the current available data, I would primarily rely on the data from SARS coronavirus, which is the closest relative to the novel coronavirus – with 80% sequence similarity – among the coronaviruses tested. For SARS coronavirus, the range of persistence on surfaces was less than five minutes to nine days,” said Dr. Charles Chiu, an infectious disease professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and director of the USCF-Abbott Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center, who was not involved in the new study.

“However, it is very difficult to extrapolate these findings to the novel coronavirus due to the different strains, viral titers and environmental conditions that were tested in the various studies and the lack of data on the novel coronavirus itself,” he said. “More research using cultures of the novel coronavirus are needed to establish the duration that it can survive on surfaces.”

According to CDC’s website, it is possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface that has the virus and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, “but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.”