COVID-19 does not spread easily from contaminated surfaces, animals: US website

By Syed Sajid Aziz in USA 
(Pakistan News & Features Services) 

The coronavirus primarily spreads from person to person and not easily from a contaminated surface, according to a report published in the Washington Post, which quoted latest update in ‘How COVID-19 Spreads’ website, run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP). 

Noting that spreading very easily and sustainably between people, it was clarified that the sources were not major risks. It has been explained that touching contaminated objects or surfaces did not appear to be a significant mode of transmission and the same was true for exposure to infected animals. 

“Our transmission language has not changed. COVID-19 spreads mainly through close contact from person to person,” CDCP spokesperson, Kristen Nordlund, remarked while revealing that the revisions were the product of an internal review and usability testing.

“The virus travels through the droplets a person produces when talking or coughing, An individual does not need to feel sick or show symptoms to spread the submicroscopic virus. Close contact means within about six feet, the distance at which a sneeze flings heavy droplets,’ the CDC website added.

“Direct contact with people has the highest likelihood of getting infected, being close to an infected person, rather than accepting a newspaper or a FedEx guy dropping off a box,” virologist Vincent Munster, a researcher in the virus ecology section at Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases facility in Hamilton, Mont, was quoted as saying.

Munster and his colleagues showed in laboratory experiments that the virus remained potentially viable on cardboard for up to 24 hours and on plastic and metal surfaces for up to three days. But the virus typically degraded within hours when outside a host.