Coronavirus, Covid-19 lives on certain surfaces for many days.
On Copper no virus activity after 4 hours, on standard cardboard for 24 hours, on plastic and stainless steel over 72 hours.
From the study abstract:
“We found that viable virus could be detected in aerosols up to 3 hours post aerosolization, up to 4 hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to 2-3 days on plastic and stainless steel. HCoV-19 and SARS-CoV-1 exhibited similar half-lives in aerosols, with median estimates around 2.7 hours.
Both viruses show relatively long viability on stainless steel and polypropylene compared to copper or cardboard: the median half-life estimate for HCoV-19 is around 13 hours on steel and around 16 hours on polypropylene. Our results indicate that aerosol and fomite transmission of HCoV-19 is plausible, as the virus can remain viable in aerosols for multiple hours and on surfaces up to days.”
The US Government funded study was performed by academics and researchers from Princeton University, the University of California, Los Angeles, the CDC and the NIH and can be downloaded here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033217v1.full.pdf
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033217
