Speaker 1: It's Friday, March thirteen. I'm Oscar Mirrors from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily
Speaker 1: coronavirus update. New researchers showing how long COVID nineteen can
Speaker 1: survive in a variety of surfaces. While it is still
Speaker 1: not known if you can contract the virus from touching
Speaker 1: certain surfaces, it is believed that it is mostly contracted
Speaker 1: from person to person transmission, but it still can live
Speaker 1: in the air for about three hours and on some
Speaker 1: surfaces for up to three days. My producer, Victor Right
Speaker 1: joins us for more. Thanks for being here, Victor, thank you.
Speaker 1: As we continue to learn more about the COVID nineteen,
Speaker 1: the coronavirus. What are the big questions about it is
Speaker 1: how the germ that causes all of this moves so
Speaker 1: easily between people. Obviously, we think, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: coughing or sneezing, there's droplets of the virus in there
Speaker 1: and somebody can contract it. That's how it's moving. But
Speaker 1: we don't know too much exactly just yet about how
Speaker 1: it lasts on surfaces. So if it was on a
Speaker 1: surface and you touched that surface, then may you touch
Speaker 1: your mouth. Can you get it that way? So there
Speaker 1: was some new research done from the National Institutes of Health,
Speaker 1: the c D, c U, c l A, and Princeton University,
Speaker 1: and they found out that it acts a lot like stars.
Speaker 1: It can live anywhere from a few hours to a
Speaker 1: couple of days on certain surfaces. As a contrast, if
Speaker 1: you're thinking about things like the flu, like influenza, if
Speaker 1: you touch a surface that has the flu on it,
Speaker 1: you can sweep up millions of viral particles in just
Speaker 1: a few seconds. And then a couple that with studies
Speaker 1: that say people touched their faces twenty times every hour. Boom.
Speaker 1: That's how things spread really quickly. So Victor tell us
Speaker 1: about this research and how long COVID nineteen stays on
Speaker 1: certain surfaces. Let's provide a little bit of context real quick.
Speaker 1: The leading theory is still that COVID nineteen has spread
Speaker 1: through person person contact, and be the researcher I'm about
Speaker 1: to give is in an enclosed specific setting. We don't
Speaker 1: know how much of the virus would need to be
Speaker 1: there in a real world scenario for someone to get infected,
Speaker 1: like touching this board or something. So a couple of things,
Speaker 1: One COVID nineteen lives in the air for about three hours.
Speaker 1: On cardboard, it's about a day or so, and on
Speaker 1: plastic and stainless steel it's up to three days, which
Speaker 1: again context all within an inclosed spot. But if it
Speaker 1: lives in stainless steel and plastic, that's kind of bad
Speaker 1: because it's everywhere. It's in hospitals, Like a lot of
Speaker 1: medical tools are made out of plastic and stainless steel.
Speaker 1: If you go on a bus and you're holding onto
Speaker 1: the pole, that stainless steel. So we need to always remember,
Speaker 1: like take a step back. This was in an enclosed setting,
Speaker 1: but that is a bad thing. But that's why they
Speaker 1: always say make sure you're cleaning all your surfaces and
Speaker 1: constantly washing your hands and all that. The one that
Speaker 1: was interesting is that they said he could last on
Speaker 1: cardboard for about a day also maybe twenty four hours
Speaker 1: or so. That's just kind of crazy thinking because we
Speaker 1: live in this kind of Amazon delivery economy, right, It's
Speaker 1: like packages are delivered, So if somebody's at a distribution
Speaker 1: center and they have COVID nineteen, maybe they can get
Speaker 1: all over the boxes. And if you've got that one
Speaker 1: day shipping, maybe maybe you can grab it. But as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, these aren't all real world settings how they're
Speaker 1: studying this, but they're comparing it to stars in the
Speaker 1: sense that it lives on surfaces just about the same.
Speaker 1: But Stars wasn't really transmitted in that way. As you
Speaker 1: mentioned at the top, It really is that person of
Speaker 1: person transmission that they're really looking at. The good news
Speaker 1: is simply wiping down a surface before touching it reduces
Speaker 1: a million particles down to just one hundred. So, like
Speaker 1: we've been saying throughout this entire thing, very simple things
Speaker 1: like washing your hands, being aware of the area around
Speaker 1: you will drastically reduce the odds of you getting something
Speaker 1: like this. Yeah. Well, we're continuing to learn more and
Speaker 1: more about COVID nineteen, so well obviously keep our ears
Speaker 1: to the ground for it. Thank you, Victor, Thank you.
Speaker 1: This has been your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget that.
Speaker 1: For today's big news stories, you can check me out
Speaker 1: on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, so
Speaker 1: follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.