Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Aug:114:163-166.
doi: 10.1016/j.jhin.2021.05.015. Epub 2021 Jun 26.

A comparison of persistence of SARS-CoV-2 variants on stainless steel

T Pottage  1 , I Garratt  2 , O Onianwa  2 , A Spencer  2 , S Paton  2 , N Q Verlander  3 , J Dunning  4 , A Bennett  2
Affiliations

A comparison of persistence of SARS-CoV-2 variants on stainless steel

T Pottage et al. J Hosp Infect. 2021 Aug.

Abstract

The survival of newer variants of SARS-CoV-2 on a representative surface has been compared to the established UK circulating isolate to determine whether enhanced environmental stability could play a part in their increased transmissibility. Stainless steel coupons were inoculated with liquid cultures of the three variants, with coupons recovered over seven days and processed for recoverable viable virus using plaque assay. After drying, there was no significant difference in inactivation rates between variants, indicating that there is no increased environmental persistence from the new variants.

Keywords: COVID-19; Environmental persistence; SARS-CoV-2; Stainless steel; Virology.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Mean quantities of viable virus recovered (pfu/coupon) from stainless steel loaded with England 02/2020 HCM/V/052 (circles), Kent variant (triangles), and South African variant (squares). Error bars represent the standard deviation from three replicates. Dashed line represents the limit of detection of the plaque assay for the combined assays from the triplicate coupons.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. World Health Organization . 16 March 2021. Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19.https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/weekly-epidemiological-update---... Available at: [last accessed June 2021]
    1. Yurkovetskiy L., Wang X., Pascal K.E., Tomkins-Tinch C., Nyalile T., Wang Y. SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein variant D614G increases infectivity and retains sensitivity to antibodies that target the receptor binding domain. bioRxiv. 2020 Jul 4 doi: 10.1101/2020.07.04.187757. 2020.07.04.187757 [preprint] - DOI
    1. Davies N.G., Abbott S., Barnard R.C., Jarvis C.I., Kucharski A.J., Munday J.D. Estimated transmissibility and impact of SARS-CoV-2 lineage B.1.1.7 in England. Science. 2021;372(6538) doi: 10.1126/science.abg3055. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Luan B., Wang H., Huynh T. Enhanced binding of the N501Y-mutated SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to the human ACE2 receptor: insights from molecular dynamics simulations. FEBS Letters. 2021;595(10):1454–1461. - PMC - PubMed
    1. van Doremalen N., Bushmaker T., Morris D.H., Holbrook M.G., Gamble A., Williamson B.N. Aerosol and surface stability of SARS-CoV-2 as compared with SARS-CoV-1. N Engl J Med. 2020;382:1564–1567. - PMC - PubMed

Substances