Coronavirus lingers in rooms and toilets, but disinfectants kill it: Singapore study
05 March, 2020
New research from Singapore published on Wednesday (Mar 4) showed that patients with the novel coronavirus extensively contaminate their bedrooms and bathrooms, underscoring the necessity to routinely clean high-touch surfaces, basins and toilet bowls.
Alternatively, the virus was killed by twice-a-day cleaning of surfaces and daily cleaning of floors with a commonly used disinfectant, which implies that current decontamination measures are sufficient as long as people adhere to them.
The study letter was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and employs cases in China where in fact the pathogen spread extensively through hospitals, infecting dozens of health care personnel and other patients.
This led scientists to believe that, beyond catching the infection through coughing, environmental contamination was a crucial element in the disease's transmission, but its extent was unclear.
Researchers at Singapore's National Centre for Infectious Diseases and DSO National Laboratories looked at the cases of three patients who were held in isolation rooms between late January and early February.
They collected samples from their rooms on five days over a two-week period.
The room of one patient was sampled before routine cleaning, as the rooms of the other two patients were sampled after disinfection measures.
The individual whose room was sampled before cleaning had the mildest symptoms of the three, only experiencing a cough. The other two had moderate symptoms: both had coughing and fever, one experienced shortness of breath and the other was paying lung mucus.
Despite this disparity, the individual whose room was sampled before cleaning contaminated 13 of 15 room sites testing, including their chair, bed rail, the glass window of their room, the ground, light switches.
Three of the five toilet sites were also contaminated, including the sink, door handle and toilet pan - more evidence that stool could be a route of transmission.
Air samples tested negative, but swabs extracted from air exhaust outlets were positive - which suggests that virus-laden droplets could be carried by air flows and deposited on vents.
"Significant environmental contamination by patients with SARS-CoV-2 through respiratory droplets and faecal shedding suggests the surroundings as a potential medium of transmission and supports the necessity for strict adherence to environmental and hand hygiene," the authors wrote.
SARS-CoV-2 may be the official name of the pathogen.
The virus, that was first discovered in China's Hubei province in December has infected a lot more than 95,000 persons in 81 countries and territories, killing a lot more than 3,200.
The World Health Organization said on Wednesday the mortality rate was 3.4 per cent, revising upward previous estimates.
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