On Today’s Post of Collateral Science, I’ll be tackling more COVID-19 rumors focused on the origin of the virus and how long it survives on surfaces. It feels like there are more of these every day, so please keep sending me ones you hear about and I’ll tackle them in turn.

Origin of SARS-CoV-2 – There have been a lot of stories being passed around about the “true” origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is causing the current COVID-19 pandemic. It feels like comic books may have become a little too popular because all of the stories sound like something out of the pages of our next superhero’s tragic backstory. Theories range from government conspiracies to purposeful development of biologic warfare, and I’m happy to say that there is absolutely no evidence that this is anything other than a natural disease.

The evidence is in the sequence of the virus. When you compare genome of the virus across known virus sequences, SARS-CoV-2 is primarily related to other corona viruses. Looking at the sequence in the SARS-CoV-2 genome, there is not an abundance of scars you would expect to see if this virus had been pieced together in a lab. There was one conspiracy that said the virus had been purposefully recombined with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, however there is no sign of any such sequences present. The sequence of the virus shows a direct link to other coronaviruses and shows most similarity to bats where we believe the virus originated until it made the jump first to pangolins and then to humans.

COVID-19 Surface Survival – I want to emphasize that we are still figuring out just how well SARS-CoV-2 survives on surfaces, this is an evolving subject and when more information is released I’ll update with another blog post as well as a correction to this one.

A study performed by members of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases with collaborators and Princeton University, University of California LA, and the CDC specifically measured surface viability of the virus, or how long it can remain on a surface and still be able to cause infection. The results are as follows:

• Air for 3 hours
• Copper for 4 hours
• Cardboard for 1 day
• Stainless steel for 3 days
• Plastic for 3 days

There are reports of virus detection off of a cruise ship 17 days after the passengers left, which is totally possible depending on how you are detecting the virus. In this case they may have been able to detect the virus based on amplification of parts of the genome which is very sensitive and can detect minuscule amounts of RNA, and there have been no claims to date if the virus at that point would still have been capable of spreading. Also of note, the virus was detected in a small room with temperature control and a limited amount of sunlight which probably has an affect on how stable the virus is.

The duration of this virus in the environment is a big reason why social distancing, washing your hands, and not touching your face is so important. Cleaning common contact surfaces is important as well and can be accomplished by disinfecting with 70% alcohol or 10% bleach solution. As we have more and more cases over the world, there is a greater and greater chance of you having contact (even incidental) with someone who is shedding the disease. Since we haven’t identified everyone with the disease, we all need to take precautions to slow the spread of this disease.

For now, stay home (as you can) and stay safe,
-Colleen

• Collateral Science
• COVID19