How long does coronavirus stay in air and on surfaces? These calculators can estimate
The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate has developed online calculators to estimate how long the coronavirus will stay on surfaces and in the air depending on weather conditions.
The surface decay calculator estimates the half-life of the virus based on the temperature and relative humidity. It also explains when 99.99% of the virus will be decayed.
“It’ll calculate the half-life of the virus and now that’s very important because the half life of the virus frankly means that if 1,000 elements of the virus is deposited on a surface, the half life means in that certain period of time that the calculator will tell you, half will be decayed in that period of time,” Acting Undersecretary William Bryan told WGNO.
The airborne decay calculator estimates the half-life based on the UV index, relative humidity, and temperature.
“The sunlight has a huge impact on decaying the virus,” Bryan told WGNO.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has published a guidance on how the virus spreads and says that it is mainly through person-to-person contact and rarely through touching surfaces.
“It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes,” the CDC says. “This is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads, but we are still learning more about this virus.”
The CDC recommends everyone wash their hands and “routinely clean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces.”
A study performed at the National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Lab shows that COVID-19 can be detected for hours in the air and up to three days on some surfaces. The scientists tested for how long the virus was present, but didn’t determine whether it remained infectious.
Researched used a nebulizer to put COVID-19 into the air and measured how long it was detectable, according to the study.
They found that the virus was detectable for up to three hours in the air, up to 24 hours on cardboard, up to four hours on copper, and up to two to three days on stainless steel and plastic.
Another study, called “Estimated Inactivation of Coronaviruses by Solar Radiation,” found that 34 minutes of sunlight in the summertime during midday can inactivate 90% or more of the COVID-19 virus.
The authors wrote that the virus “should be inactivated relatively fast during summer in many populous cities of the world.”
Cory Merow, co-author of the study “Seasonality and Uncertainty in COVID-19 Growth Rates,” told The New York Times that even if coronavirus cases drop during the summer — which is currently not happening — public health measures, such as social distancing and wearing masks, would still be required to stay safe.
A different study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers found it was “extremely unlikely that the spread of 2019-nCoV would slow down in the USA or Europe, due to environmental factors.”
The U.S. hit an all-time high of daily confirmed coronavirus cases on June 24 — with 38,115 new infections — just days after the start of summer, according to The Washington Post.
The coronavirus has infected more than 2 million people in the U.S. as of June 26 and killed more than 124,000 people nationwide, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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