COVID-19 can survive in dust for up to a month – study

Indoor dust could be a way of surveilling coronavirus outbreaks, according to a recent study.The yet to be peer-reviewed study, published in medRxiv, notes that coronavirus could survive in indoor dust for up to a month.The study authors noted that the research did not measure the virus’ viability or transmissibility, but focused on the purpose of surveilling viral compounds. Therefore, it is unsure if the virus could still be passed on to humans while it lives in the dust.”Overall, this work demonstrates that bulk floor dust is a potentially useful matrix for long-term monitoring of viral disease outbreaks in high-risk populations and buildings,” the research stated.The researchers worked with employees responsible for cleaning isolation rooms for COVID-19 patients at Ohio State University, and additionally collected samples from homes with positive cases.They found that the majority of the dust samples (97%) contained undecayed SARS-CoV-2, the disease that causes COVID-19, up to four weeks after collection using PCR tests.Monitoring dust within “high-concern buildings” such as nursing homes and apartment complexes, could allow for broader surveillance of coronavirus as scientists already do for wastewater – hoping to compliment this environmental surveillance tactic with a more concentrated approach.

“Wastewater detection may be more beneficial at larger population scales covering thousands of individuals in a community, and one infected individual may be detectable among 100 to 2,000,000 individuals,” the study authors wrote.”Indoor dust may be useful in areas with smaller numbers of high-risk individuals where more specific outbreak identification is critical,” they added. “Additionally, not all individuals secrete virus in stool.”Indoor dust sampling may also be less expensive and be easier to implement, with simplified sample collection and no pre-concentration steps of samples required.”Therefore, this tactic would be best applied to nursing homes or other at-risk populations as aforementioned.”In nursing homes, for example, you’re still going to need to know how coronavirus is spreading inside the building,” lead author of the study Nicole Renninger told The Weather Channel. “For surveillance purposes, you need to know if you are picking up an outbreak that’s going on right now.”
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