How Long Can COVID-19 Last on Different Surfaces?

New research is showing how long COVID-19 can survive on a variety of surfaces. It is still not known if you can contract the coronavirus from touching certain surfaces, it is believed that it is mostly contracted from person to person transmission, but it can live in the air for about three hours and on some surfaces up to three days. My producer Victor Wright, joins us for more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Friday, March thirteen. I'm Oscar Mirrors from the Daily
Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily
coronavirus update. New researchers showing how long COVID nineteen can
survive in a variety of surfaces. While it is still
not known if you can contract the virus from touching
certain surfaces, it is believed that it is mostly contracted
from person to person transmission, but it still can live

(00:22):
in the air for about three hours and on some
surfaces for up to three days. My producer, Victor Right
joins us for more. Thanks for being here, Victor, thank you.
As we continue to learn more about the COVID nineteen,
the coronavirus. What are the big questions about it is
how the germ that causes all of this moves so

(00:43):
easily between people. Obviously, we think, you know, if you're
coughing or sneezing, there's droplets of the virus in there
and somebody can contract it. That's how it's moving. But
we don't know too much exactly just yet about how
it lasts on surfaces. So if it was on a
surface and you touched that surface, then may you touch
your mouth. Can you get it that way? So there
was some new research done from the National Institutes of Health,

(01:05):
the c D, c U, c l A, and Princeton University,
and they found out that it acts a lot like stars.
It can live anywhere from a few hours to a
couple of days on certain surfaces. As a contrast, if
you're thinking about things like the flu, like influenza, if
you touch a surface that has the flu on it,
you can sweep up millions of viral particles in just

(01:25):
a few seconds. And then a couple that with studies
that say people touched their faces twenty times every hour. Boom.
That's how things spread really quickly. So Victor tell us
about this research and how long COVID nineteen stays on
certain surfaces. Let's provide a little bit of context real quick.
The leading theory is still that COVID nineteen has spread

(01:46):
through person person contact, and be the researcher I'm about
to give is in an enclosed specific setting. We don't
know how much of the virus would need to be
there in a real world scenario for someone to get infected,
like touching this board or something. So a couple of things,
One COVID nineteen lives in the air for about three hours.

(02:10):
On cardboard, it's about a day or so, and on
plastic and stainless steel it's up to three days, which
again context all within an inclosed spot. But if it
lives in stainless steel and plastic, that's kind of bad
because it's everywhere. It's in hospitals, Like a lot of

(02:32):
medical tools are made out of plastic and stainless steel.
If you go on a bus and you're holding onto
the pole, that stainless steel. So we need to always remember,
like take a step back. This was in an enclosed setting,
but that is a bad thing. But that's why they
always say make sure you're cleaning all your surfaces and
constantly washing your hands and all that. The one that

(02:53):
was interesting is that they said he could last on
cardboard for about a day also maybe twenty four hours
or so. That's just kind of crazy thinking because we
live in this kind of Amazon delivery economy, right, It's
like packages are delivered, So if somebody's at a distribution
center and they have COVID nineteen, maybe they can get
all over the boxes. And if you've got that one

(03:14):
day shipping, maybe maybe you can grab it. But as
you mentioned, these aren't all real world settings how they're
studying this, but they're comparing it to stars in the
sense that it lives on surfaces just about the same.
But Stars wasn't really transmitted in that way. As you
mentioned at the top, It really is that person of
person transmission that they're really looking at. The good news

(03:35):
is simply wiping down a surface before touching it reduces
a million particles down to just one hundred. So, like
we've been saying throughout this entire thing, very simple things
like washing your hands, being aware of the area around
you will drastically reduce the odds of you getting something
like this. Yeah. Well, we're continuing to learn more and

(03:57):
more about COVID nineteen, so well obviously keep our ears
to the ground for it. Thank you, Victor, Thank you.
This has been your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget that.
For today's big news stories, you can check me out
on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, so
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