Below is a link for the “regular” flu on fabrics. The regular flu IIRC has similar envelopes as SARS, MERS and Covid-19. Although Covid-19 lasts a lot longer on harder surfaces than the regular flu, so perhaps these results should be taken with a large grain of salt.
Or - multiply the times by 4 or something as a guess? If the regular flu can last for 12 hours on steel, and the Covid-19 for 48 hours or whatever the numbers are. Anyway - perhaps can use as a guideline.
Summary - the regular flu doesn’t last long on fabrics - like 20 minutes. Mostly due to the drying of the envelope and the wicking of the material of the moisture in the envelope. In the charts the cotton cloth did very poorly. But at the end of the paper they explain it as they had the virus in a water solution, and the soaked cotton stayed damp compared to the synthetics that dried quickly.
They surmised that droplets on cotton would have dried as quickly as the synthetics.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4353734/
SHOES
“I recommend having a dedicated pair of shoes to go out in and then a clean pair to change into before entering the house,” Pinckney told HuffPost. “Health care workers are always mindful to change shoes [and put work shoes in bags] before getting in the car and going home.”
Schmidt recommended wearing shoes that are machine washable.
...“You have to hide the shoes from small children to ensure they don’t touch them,” she told HuffPost. “Teach them not to touch shoes unless they are designated indoor shoes, as shoes are the dirtiest objects we have in our homes, other than the toilets.”...
Thank you.
That helps a lot.
Thanks! Very very interesting. Required reading for all, multiply times by whatever factor seems prudent (I’d go with at least 5x to be cautious.)
I’d note that the results were under unusual (lab) conditions: Low humidity with air blowing over the samples to dry them.
So, relative humidity likely plays a role, and dampness (rain wetted clothing) would too. I wonder also, what about sweat?
I suppose this might have ramifications for advanced mask designs, esp. for health care providers.
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In general, drying seems to “kill” the virus. Would virus particles stay alive long if in aerosolized (very tiny) droplets in a normal or low humidity room? It seems like those would dry very quickly.
ASs far as materials comparisons, cotton looks like it is all over the place. (The jeans did well.) I’m guessing that might vary with processing and treatments, and that is likely true of other fibers as well. One could and perhaps should run their own crude tests of absorbency.
Question, questions...
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Going to the grocery store on a cool, damp rainy day sounds like a bad idea. Well, actually, we sorta knew that!