Employees of American Centers for the Control and Prevention of Diseases (CDC) debunked the largest myth of COVID-19: It turned out the microbial risk of SARS-COV-2 transmission through the infected surfaces is very low.
Researchers confirmed that it is really possible to infect, touching the surface on which viral particles are really possible. However, the likelihood of sick in real conditions is influenced by several important factors that are not counted in laboratory experiments, the news portal TRT YNU is written.
If you consider all the factors, then each person’s contact with an infected surface can lead to its own infection with a probability of less than 1 out of 10,000.
The first of these factors is the surface structure on which viral particles fall. It is proved that in porous surfaces, SARS-COV-2 viable particles cannot be found in a few minutes, maximum – hours.
The virus is inactivated so quickly for two reasons. First, under the action of capillary pressure, porous surfaces quickly draw a drop of aerosol. And secondly, with porous surfaces, the drops in principle evaporate faster than with smooth, on which the virus lives from several days to several weeks.
The second factor is environmental conditions. Lower the risk of infection through the surface can ventilation (air flow can remove particles from the surface) and ultraviolet radiation, which can destroy viral particles.
In the first weeks of a pandemic, scientists and doctors assumed that a new type coronavirus extends mainly in two ways: air-drip or direct contact with infected.