This isn’t necessary. The half life of free CV is estimated at 1-2 hours. While it’s true that CV DNA can still be detected after several days, this says more about detection technology than CVs virulence.
After 12 hours we’d expect the number of active virus particles to be reduced by over 99% rendering the risk very minimal.
My article is a peer-reviewed [edit: maybe not very peer reviewed] literature review, aggregating results from multiple studies (that’s important).
The 1-2 hour number you cite is for aerosolized virus. The article says the number is 24 hours for cardboard.
However, variability between studies is quite high. Look at Table 1 in my article. Search for the keyword “Paper” and you’ll see that for the same amount of virus at room temperature on paper, one study got 3 hours and another study got 4-5 days. (It’s possible this is because different strains were used, but that doesn’t reassure me either—it suggests that the virus could quickly mutate to be viable on surfaces much longer.)
While it’s true that CV DNA can still be detected after several days, this says more about detection technology than CVs virulence.
A quote from the Results section of the paper I cited (emphasis mine):
Most data were described with the endemic human coronavirus strain (HCoV-) 229E. On different types of materials it can remain infectious for from 2 hours up to 9 days.
The drop-off in infectiousness is documented in the papers reviewed in the paper you cited, which agrees with the parent comment.
And variability between cited studies is expected when the review failed to distinguish between wildly different conditions—it ignored differences between stool, urine, and cough droplets, and between different methods, since some of the papers allowed the droplets to dry, and others incubated them.
Finally, again, the paper you cited isn’t a meta analysis, it’s a review. And the preprint isn’t just a preprint, it’s a paper being reviewed for NEJM by a very well respected group, while the published paper is by a first author who is on the editorial board of, and is listed as being accepted the day it was received in, “Journal of Hospital Infection.” I’m thoroughly unimpressed by the supposed peer review that occurred.
The drop-off in infectiousness is documented in the papers reviewed in the paper you cited, which agrees with the parent comment.
Is your claim that the paper I cited agrees with Josh’s comment? That’s what it sounds like you’re claiming. Can you cite the specific sentence in the paper I cited that agrees with Josh’s comment? Because all I see is the review repeating the claim “Human coronaviruses can remain infectious on inanimate surfaces for up to 9 days” over and over.
And elsewhere in this thread you said “the results noted in the review are clear that [paper] is not a very hospitable surface”, but that is very much not clear as noted in the review—in Table 1, you can see they’re citing a study that they summarize as SARS-CoV persisting for 4-5 days on paper.
It could be that the review is summarizing these studies inaccurately. But if you want to earn my trust you have to say something like “yes the review says X but really Y is true”, instead of confidently misrepresenting things that I can easily check for myself.
I find it plausible that this review was slapped together quickly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and a closer look at these studies would find the 9 day figure cited in the abstract to be unjustified. But until that’s done in a formal way, I don’t see why I should trust you more than the first author of this review (who seems to be a professor at a German university who’s written many papers on topics related to this for a variety of journals)--your comments are looking very slapped together as well. BTW, the Journal of Hospital Infection seems legit to me.
Source 25 in the review paper, which is what the review cites for multiple days on paper, and the point you’re defending, is the one I cited in the reply below, and even quoted, where I pointed out it wasn’t relevant. I’m not just confidently stating things, I linked to it in the comment I pointed you to when I said “See my responses in the other thread below.”
And I don’t think the review was citing anything inaccurately, it was doing what a review article should, which is summarize the sources. It did that. I’m objecting to your conclusions. And if the source paper disagrees with the conclusion you made from the review, you should go to the original paper, not return to the review. In this case, the full paper is not available online because it is from before the journal had PDF versions. The summary, however, notes that despite storing the samples so they wouldn’t dry, “The survival abilities on the surfaces of eight different materials and in water were quite comparable, revealing reduction of infectivity after 72 to 96 h exposure.” It seems they didn’t test before that amount of time, and so the source for 4 days is an upper limit. This even agrees with most of the other results—see the next paragraph—because they didn’t dry the sample, and after the test exposure, they put the remaining virus into cells, in ideal conditions, and looked at whether they could still reproduce (“cytopathic effect”.)
Look at source 26, the other source cited in the review that discussed paper: “SARS-CoV GVU6109 can survive for 4 days in diarrheal stool samples with an alkaline pH, and it can remain infectious in respiratory specimens [that are kept wet] for >7 days at room temperature. Even at a relatively high concentration (104 tissue culture infective doses/mL), the virus could not be recovered after drying of a paper request form...” This seems to match what the other paper says, despite using a different variant of SARS, but note the actually relevant point that if the sample dries, it’s going to be safe. Which as I keep saying, is the key point. (And if it isn’t, you can just wash your hands. That works. It’s enough.)
Finally, I didn’t say JHI wasn’t legit—it’s in NCBI - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/8007166 - but I object to dumping on a paper by a half dozen people, including those at NCIRD and NIAID, as “just a preprint” compared to a review paper that wasn’t itself peer reviewed, and didn’t follow PRISMA guidelines for systemic reviews. Both papers are perfectly fine, so I took issue with you dismissing one of them.
OK, I think I see what’s going on—I didn’t realize you were pointing to your reply to Vaniver.
I don’t think the assumption of drying is necessarily justified—the package could be getting delivered on a humid day. These kind of questions might be really important to someone who has diabetes or something like that.
Thanks for weighing in btw, I’m learning stuff about how to evaluate research here :)
This isn’t necessary. The half life of free CV is estimated at 1-2 hours. While it’s true that CV DNA can still be detected after several days, this says more about detection technology than CVs virulence. After 12 hours we’d expect the number of active virus particles to be reduced by over 99% rendering the risk very minimal.
https://www.livescience.com/amp/coronavirus-can-spread-as-an-aerosol.html
This seems to be
(a) news coverage—so not necessarily reliable, of
(b) a preprint—so not peer reviewed
My article is a peer-reviewed [edit: maybe not very peer reviewed] literature review, aggregating results from multiple studies (that’s important).
The 1-2 hour number you cite is for aerosolized virus. The article says the number is 24 hours for cardboard.
However, variability between studies is quite high. Look at Table 1 in my article. Search for the keyword “Paper” and you’ll see that for the same amount of virus at room temperature on paper, one study got 3 hours and another study got 4-5 days. (It’s possible this is because different strains were used, but that doesn’t reassure me either—it suggests that the virus could quickly mutate to be viable on surfaces much longer.)
A quote from the Results section of the paper I cited (emphasis mine):
See my responses in the other thread below.
The drop-off in infectiousness is documented in the papers reviewed in the paper you cited, which agrees with the parent comment.
And variability between cited studies is expected when the review failed to distinguish between wildly different conditions—it ignored differences between stool, urine, and cough droplets, and between different methods, since some of the papers allowed the droplets to dry, and others incubated them.
Finally, again, the paper you cited isn’t a meta analysis, it’s a review. And the preprint isn’t just a preprint, it’s a paper being reviewed for NEJM by a very well respected group, while the published paper is by a first author who is on the editorial board of, and is listed as being accepted the day it was received in, “Journal of Hospital Infection.” I’m thoroughly unimpressed by the supposed peer review that occurred.
Edited to add—The accepted preprint is now live on NEJM https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2004973
Is your claim that the paper I cited agrees with Josh’s comment? That’s what it sounds like you’re claiming. Can you cite the specific sentence in the paper I cited that agrees with Josh’s comment? Because all I see is the review repeating the claim “Human coronaviruses can remain infectious on inanimate surfaces for up to 9 days” over and over.
And elsewhere in this thread you said “the results noted in the review are clear that [paper] is not a very hospitable surface”, but that is very much not clear as noted in the review—in Table 1, you can see they’re citing a study that they summarize as SARS-CoV persisting for 4-5 days on paper.
It could be that the review is summarizing these studies inaccurately. But if you want to earn my trust you have to say something like “yes the review says X but really Y is true”, instead of confidently misrepresenting things that I can easily check for myself.
I find it plausible that this review was slapped together quickly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and a closer look at these studies would find the 9 day figure cited in the abstract to be unjustified. But until that’s done in a formal way, I don’t see why I should trust you more than the first author of this review (who seems to be a professor at a German university who’s written many papers on topics related to this for a variety of journals)--your comments are looking very slapped together as well. BTW, the Journal of Hospital Infection seems legit to me.
Source 25 in the review paper, which is what the review cites for multiple days on paper, and the point you’re defending, is the one I cited in the reply below, and even quoted, where I pointed out it wasn’t relevant. I’m not just confidently stating things, I linked to it in the comment I pointed you to when I said “See my responses in the other thread below.”
And I don’t think the review was citing anything inaccurately, it was doing what a review article should, which is summarize the sources. It did that. I’m objecting to your conclusions. And if the source paper disagrees with the conclusion you made from the review, you should go to the original paper, not return to the review. In this case, the full paper is not available online because it is from before the journal had PDF versions. The summary, however, notes that despite storing the samples so they wouldn’t dry, “The survival abilities on the surfaces of eight different materials and in water were quite comparable, revealing reduction of infectivity after 72 to 96 h exposure.” It seems they didn’t test before that amount of time, and so the source for 4 days is an upper limit. This even agrees with most of the other results—see the next paragraph—because they didn’t dry the sample, and after the test exposure, they put the remaining virus into cells, in ideal conditions, and looked at whether they could still reproduce (“cytopathic effect”.)
Look at source 26, the other source cited in the review that discussed paper: “SARS-CoV GVU6109 can survive for 4 days in diarrheal stool samples with an alkaline pH, and it can remain infectious in respiratory specimens [that are kept wet] for >7 days at room temperature. Even at a relatively high concentration (104 tissue culture infective doses/mL), the virus could not be recovered after drying of a paper request form...” This seems to match what the other paper says, despite using a different variant of SARS, but note the actually relevant point that if the sample dries, it’s going to be safe. Which as I keep saying, is the key point. (And if it isn’t, you can just wash your hands. That works. It’s enough.)
Finally, I didn’t say JHI wasn’t legit—it’s in NCBI - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/8007166 - but I object to dumping on a paper by a half dozen people, including those at NCIRD and NIAID, as “just a preprint” compared to a review paper that wasn’t itself peer reviewed, and didn’t follow PRISMA guidelines for systemic reviews. Both papers are perfectly fine, so I took issue with you dismissing one of them.
OK, I think I see what’s going on—I didn’t realize you were pointing to your reply to Vaniver.
I don’t think the assumption of drying is necessarily justified—the package could be getting delivered on a humid day. These kind of questions might be really important to someone who has diabetes or something like that.
Thanks for weighing in btw, I’m learning stuff about how to evaluate research here :)