How long it lasts: The staphylococcus aureus bacteria is responsible for wound infections, toxic shock syndrome, and MRSA. It forms spores that allow it to survive for weeks on fabric. MRSA bacteria can live on surfaces for longer than other bacterias and viruses as they survive much better without moisture. How it spreads: MRSA harmlessly lives on the skin of around 1 in 30 people. You can get the bacteria on your skin relatively easily; by touching somebody with it, by sharing towels, bedsheets or clothes with somebody with it, or by touching surfaces with it.
Often, it will leave your skin without you ever knowing you had it. This can be as quick as a few hours or could take a couple of weeks. But to make you ill, it needs to get deeper into your skin for example, via a wound or sore.
Start Your Estimate. As soon as fluid leaves the body and is exposed to air, it quickly begins to dry up.
This damages the virus, making it inactive. This can take as little as just a few hours. When a bodily fluid containing HIV leaves the body and lands on a surface, the virus remains active within the fluid for several days, even as the fluid dries.
HIV in a syringe, however, survives much longer. How it spreads: HIV is found within the bodily fluids of an infected person. This includes semen, vaginal and anal fluids, blood, and breast milk. HIV cannot be transmitted through sweat, urine or saliva. However, you can still get HIV by sharing needles, syringes or other injecting equipment and it is possible to pass the virus from mother to baby during pregnancy, birth or breastfeeding. The Hepatitis A virus can stay infectious for months and is transmitted via the faecal to oral route and is highly contagious.
Hepatitis C can live outside of the body for up to four days, but most experts believe that it typically survives for up to 16 hours at room temperature. Hepatitis C is also transferred via bodily fluids. While viruses do best on hard surfaces, bacteria are more likely to persist on porous materials.
In general, bacteria remain infectious longer than viruses. As the fear of the risk of catching a serious disease such as the coronavirus, H1N1 and deadly strains of the flu increases, more Americans are becoming concerned with keeping their homes germ-free.
While it's not possible to eliminate germs and microbes entirely, learning about how long they live on different surfaces can help improve your cleaning regimen. When you're in the vicinity of someone suffering from an infectious disease like the flu, it's very easy for these germs to leave their body due to coughing, sneezing and bodily contact.
Once these germs come into contact with surfaces commonly found in the home , they can remain infectious for quite some time out of the body. It's actually not correct to describe germs as "living" on surfaces as they are not alive in the sense that people are, and they require a living host to latch onto and replicate.
The ability of a germ to make you ill degrades over time and if it is no longer "intact" it cannot cause an infection. There have been several studies looking at how long germs remain intact on surfaces with some differences in the results. For example, these studies found a wide variety of time frames for germ viability on hard surfaces:. While there is a range of times that cold and flu viruses can live outside the body on common surfaces, it's clear that there's a definite difference between soft and hard surfaces.
Because germs need a moist environment to thrive, such as inside the human body, they tend to degrade faster on soft surfaces that pull moisture away from them. Germs are also weak to temperature changes, UV light , changes in alkalinity and acidity, humidity and the presence of salt. In general they will last longer in environments that are dark, humid, and warm.
Most cold and flu germs are from " enveloped viruses " which are inherently weak to being destroyed both by time, the environment and disinfecting agents. It's commonly thought that these viruses will no longer be viable after 48 hours at the longest.
However, "non-enveloped" viruses can remain viable on surfaces for much longer. For example, the norovirus is notorious for making cruise ship passengers seriously ill and it can remain intact for several weeks. Another non-enveloped virus, calicivirus, can be viable for weeks on surfaces. The easiest step to protect yourself is to wash your hands as often as possible, but if you are concerned about infection, consider sterilizing high-touch objects like phones and doorknobs as well.
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The influenza virus that causes the flu can live for up to three days on hard surfaces like subway poles and door handles. The influenza virus can only live for about 8 to 12 hours on fabric.
Since skin produces anti-microbial substances that kill germs, the flu virus can only live for 5 minutes on the body. T his article was medically reviewed by Tania Elliott , MD, who specializes in infectious diseases related to allergies and immunology for internal medicine at NYU Langone Health.
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