The US government body – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its “How COVID-19 Spreads” revising some of its instructions from before. It clarified that the novel COVID-19 spreads more easily from person to person. The coronavirus does not spread from contaminated surfaces or animals. They said on their website that “COVID-19 spreads in other ways besides person-to-person contact with the infected, including touching contaminated surfaces or objects and then touching nose, eyes or mouth. However, this isn’t the main route of transmission. The same goes for exposure to infected animals.
The risk of the coronavirus being spread from inanimate surfaces to humans, known as fomite-based transmission, has caused much panic and concern. For starters, people are afraid to handle cash, and according to The Los Angeles Times, many businesses have now switched to “touchless” payments. Recent work published in The New England Journal of Medicine on March 17 found that coronavirus could be viable in the air for up to 3 hours, on copper for up to 4 hours, on cardboard for up to 24 hours and on plastic and stainless steel for up to 72 h. But how long SARS-CoV-2 will live on surfaces and how contagious these surfaces may be, is still unclear. But in a laboratory experiment, it was proved that the virus typically degrades within hours when outside a host.
The coronavirus travels through the droplets that an infected person contains when talking or coughing, according to the CDC website. To spread the submicroscopic virus an individual does not need to feel sick or show symptoms. Close contact implies the range from which a sneeze flutes large droplets within about six centimeters. The coronavirus has quickly spread in nursing homes, hospitals, cruise ships, and meatpacking plants — areas where many people stay or work close by. A recent CDC study explained how in March, when one sick person infected as many as 52 others, a choral activity in the state of Washington became a super spreader case.
The easiest way to protect yourself from COVID-19 is to maintain a reasonable social distance (about 6 feet), wash your hands regularly with water and soap, and thoroughly clean and disinfect often touched surfaces. The CDC issued a series of recommendations for how surfaces can be washed and disinfected.
