COVID-19 And Surfaces, Again

It's time to take another look at whether COVID-19 is spread from surfaces. We're now more than half a year into the pandemic, and there hasn't been any widespread indication that the disease spreads from contact with surfaces. Note the key word here: widespread. Yes, it can be contracted by surface contact, but the risk is generally low, unless you're someplace like a hospital ward.

Wired has published an article that summarizes the latest research. 

Low risk is not, of course, no risk, she adds. There are high-touch objects that merit disinfection, and places like hospitals need clean rooms and furniture. People at high risk from Covid-19 may want to take extra precautions. But the best advice for breaking that object-to-nose chain, according to all the health experts I spoke with: Wash your hands.

Goldman, too, had come to similar conclusions months before all this additional research came out, and US public health guidance followed right along with him. Since his Lancet paper in July, the focus on fomites has waned, and has been replaced by a focus on person-to-person transmission through respiration. The shift was based on epidemiological evidence. Experts knew all along that droplets passed by sneezing, coughing, or speaking were likely an important mode of transmission—that’s just how respiratory viruses tend to move. Over time, it became clear that aerosols, which remain suspended in the air, can better explain why so many infections seemed to be passing between people who did not directly interact, but could have shared the same indoor air. That’s why public health officials now emphasize mask wearing and ventilation. The CDC’s most recently updated guidance, from early October, holds that “spread from touching surfaces is not thought to be a common way that Covid-19 spread.” For those reasons, or perhaps out of fatigue, the scrubbing became less scrupulous over the summer.

At this point, it probably makes more sense for places like schools and stores to put more effort into ensuring that their ventilation systems are clean and recirculating as much fresh air as possible, rather than spending time and money on deep cleaning.

Still, it's prudent to wash your hands thoroughly and often and wear masks indoors in public.