Coronavirus Survives for 28 Days on Mobile Screens
Researchers at Australia’s National Science agency have found that coronavirus can survive for up to 28 days on banknotes, glass items like mobile phone screens and stainless steel.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), coronavirus can survive for up to 72 hours on plastic and stainless steel and up to 24 hours on cardboard, and four hours on copper. For a long time everyone believed this. Now the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness (ACDP) conducted a research on how long the virus stays alive on surfaces. They found that coronavirus can survive for up to 28 days on common surfaces like banknotes, glass items like mobile phone screens and stainless steel. The ACDP found that the virus survives longer at lower temperatures and on smooth surfaces, such as glass, stainless steel and plastic compared to porous surfaces like cotton.
Earlier studies also found that survival times decrease as the temperature increases. The Australian researchers also studied how long the virus survives in the dark. The study has also found that proteins and fats in body fluids could increase the virus survival times. How the virus can spread through surfaces, how many people it can infect, is not known yet. But researchers say once they know how long it stays alive on surfaces they can plan ways to kill it and control the spread.
