Reuters has reported that a recent study has shown that the coronavirus can remain viable and infectious in droplets in the air for hours and on surfaces up to days.
The publication further reports that the study that appeared online in the New England Journal of Medicine on Tuesday was undertaken by Scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Below are the major findings:
- When the virus is carried by the droplets released when someone coughs or sneezes, it able to still infect people in aerosols for at least three hours.
- On plastic and stainless steel, viable virus (able to infect people) could be detected after three days.
- On cardboard, the virus was not viable after 24 hours.
- On copper, it took 4 hours for the virus to become inactivated.
- In terms of half-life, the research team found that it takes about 66 minutes for half the virus particles to lose function if they are in an aerosol droplet.
- On stainless steel, it takes 5 hours 38 minutes for half of the virus particles to become inactive.
- On plastic, the half-life is 6 hours 49 minutes, researchers found.
- On cardboard, the half-life was about three and a half hours, but the researchers said there was a lot of variability in those results “so we advise caution” interpreting that number.
- The shortest survival time was on copper, where half the virus became inactivated within 46 minutes.
More: Reuters