Coronavirus Can Stay Active On Animal Skin For Four Days, Meatpacking Plants Could Facilitate Virus Spread: US Army Study

A study conducted by researchers at the biggest US military bioweapons laboratory has said that the coronavirus can live on animal skin for four days.

The researchers with the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases have expressed concerns regarding the spread of the coronavirus. They have said that meat plants could help the spread of the virus.

The team led by David Harbourt, who comes from the base’s biosafety division said, “Without an extensive testing and contract tracing programme, transmission around meatpacking plants will likely continue to be an issue.”

This report says that the researchers have found that of the samples, the coronavirus "could survive the longest at room temperature on pig skin – up to four days. And it remained stable on the skin in refrigerated temperatures throughout the two-week experiment."

The researchers have tested the virus on different substances. These include as per a non-peer-reviewed paper posted on the preprint site medRxiv.org, "uncirculated paper currency supplied by the US Secret Service and unused cotton-polyester fabric".

Harbourt and his colleagues put the coronavirus on pig skin and kept the samples at the temperature that pork is usually kept at in meat packing and processing plants, which is 4 degrees Celsius (39.2 degrees Fahrenheit). It was seen that the "viral strains had an average 'half-life' – the time it takes for half of the pathogens to die out – of nearly 47 hours."

The report mentions that the Chinese health authorities suspected the virus "might have entered the market via imported frozen meat". They had no direct evidence for it.

The report adds: "Viable strains remained detectable for as long as two weeks in the chilled conditions."