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As expected at this early stage, this is where we, the general population, get fed different information and, since we are not technical enough on the matter, may misread (along with Journalists) some information that reaches us:
The WHO (World Health Organization) states on its web page (
https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses) that:
It is still not known how long the 2019-nCoV virus survives on surfaces, although preliminary information suggests the virus may survive a few hours. Simple disinfectants can kill the virus making it no longer possible to infect people.
A few hours are not enough for a shipment to carry the virus in an active state (i.e. shipment sent from China), but enough for someone who has it to touch/sneeze over some physical form of money, and hand it out along with the delivery of a Pizza. Who knows about the Pizza box itself while we’re at it.
Of course, things evolve quickly in terms of knowledge of the Coronavirus, and whilst the WHO states the above, The Journal of Hospital Infection published on February the 6th the following article:
https://www.journalofhospitalinfection.com/article/S0195-6701(20)30046-3/fulltext. Now this study seems to analyse the coronavirus family in broader terms, and is not limited to this specific outbreak, but the study claims:
The analysis of 22 studies reveals that human coronaviruses such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) coronavirus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus or endemic human coronaviruses (HCoV) can persist on inanimate surfaces like metal, glass or plastic for up to 9 days <…>
By my reading, the above mentioned 9 days are rather generic, and it
depends on the specific Coronavirus strain. For example, the above link encloses a section that indicates that SARS-CoV strain P9 can last on paper for up to 5 days, but strain GVU6109 lasts for less than 24h on an inanimate surface.
The Coronavirus we are dealing with here, 2019-nCoV, is not mentioned explicitly in the study results, so what I make from it, is that they have given a historical perspective of how long a Coronavirus may last for on an inanimate surface, based on prior studies, as a sort of framework,
but not specifically on the 2019-nCoV strain.