How Long Does the Coronavirus Last on Surfaces?
Researchers looked at how long the virus can survive on cardboard, plastic, and stainless steel, as well as after being aerosolized and suspended in midair.
the virus covid-19
A transmission-electron microscope image of an isolate from the first US case of Covid-19.
PHOTOGRAPH: HANNAH A BULLOCK; AZAIBI TAMIN/CDC
By now, let’s hope you’re safely ensconced at home—going a little stir-crazy, perhaps, but doing your part to “flatten the curve.” But let’s say you’re one of those people who can’t stay in. Maybe you deliver Amazon boxes all day long, or you still need to drive a city bus. Or maybe you’re treating sick people in a hospital while trying not to get sick yourself. Or, for that matter, maybe you just have to go to the grocery store. In that case, you might want to know: How long does SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, last on surfaces we touch every day?
Potentially several hours, or even days, according to a preprint published this week by researchers at the National Institutes of Health, Princeton, and the University of California, Los Angeles. The researchers exposed various materials to the virus in the lab. They found that it remained virulent on surfaces for a lengthy period: from up to 24 hours on cardboard to up to two or three days on plastic and stainless steel. It also remained viable in aerosols—attached to particles that stay aloft in the air—for up to three hours. That’s all basically in line with the stability of SARS, the coronavirus that caused an outbreak in the early 2000s, the researchers note.
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The researchers caution that work done in the lab may not directly reflect how long the virus can hang around on surfaces out in the world. But it’s a critical part of understanding the virus—and how to forestall the disease’s spread—all the same. That’s because transmission dynamics are difficult to study in the midst of an epidemic. In hospitals and other public spaces, people are doing their best to disinfect, making it difficult to study how microbes behave in the wild.
And similarly, while the researchers tested how long the virus can survive in aerosols suspended in the air, they didn’t actually sample the air around infected people. Instead, they put the virus into a nebulizer and
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