Toward the beginning of the pandemic, a study showed that the SARS-Cov-2 virus can survive on cardboard for as long as 24 hours and on stainless steel for about 72 hours.
Figuring out how long a contagious virus can survive on human skin isn’t an easy challenge as not many people are willing to have live SARS-CoV-2 smeared on them just for science.
That’s why Japanese researchers used an unusual alternative -- human skin collected at autopsy about 24 hours after death.
What they found was significant -- the SARS-CoV-2 virus could survive on human skin for nine hours -- significantly longer than the roughly two hours that the flu virus could remain a threat.
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