How Long Does The Coronavirus Live On Clothes, And Will Laundry Detergent Kill The Virus?

[KY_EnviroGuy]

9. Simple: Think of it like washing your hands.

Soap and water and scrubbing vigorously for less than a minute is the magic as confirmed by the WHO and CDC.

After a lot of searching for info on what's required to denature this virus, I have not seen any scientific reports on testing of various cleaning methods for clothing. That said, this is from the article:

.....we don’t yet have that information about fabrics.

“I suspect that you can find viability of the virus for several hours to maybe a day on clothes,” infectious disease expert Amesh A. Adalja, MD, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Maryland, tells Health. “It depends largely on the environmental conditions—temperature and humidity impact the growth of the virus.”

In general, Dr. Adalja says he doesn’t believe that clothes act as a “major vehicle spread” for the new coronavirus.

However, tests have been done on other materials such as skin, paper and metals and a number of cleaning methods.

For me, if the CDC and WHO says that scrubbing for 20-seconds with plain soap and warm water is adequate for skin, then several minutes (typical wash cycle) in laundry detergent (harsh stuff) and warm or hot water will undoubtedly denature this virus on clothing. These viruses are not living things and as such can't be "killed", but their ability to harm us can easily be neutralized.

I worry far more about food products which are difficult or impossible to clean thoroughly so that denaturing with high heat is the only solution.


KY.......