The coronavirus can last for 28 days on some surfaces

Jul 27, 2020
304
47
230
Visit site
Quoting from the article:

"..... not using real mucus was a flaw with the study design, since real mucus contains enzymes that would break down the virus."

end quote

This is a major-league, hall-of-fame omission from the study and renders the results highly suspect regarding actual conditions of surface transmission. Any significant protease activity is going to destroy the virion surface proteins, rendering it inactive.

Mucous from those infected after ca. 7 days will also have some antibodies against the virus, further mitigating viral infectivity. And of course the antibody levels will increase over time.

Would suggest these folks go back and try to cook up a more appropriate artificial mucous to give us a more realistic answer on surface stability, if that is even possible. Perhaps getting some uninfected real donor mucous would be a more accurate approach for such a study.

Clearly the optimal study is using mucous from infected people, measuring the viral load, and work with that. It will take a lot more work, but give a lot more accuracy. People should not be overly concerned about this "research".