NDA Journal 8 News Presence and Stability of SARSCoV-2 on Environmental Currency, and Money Cards Reveals a Lack of Live Virus By Newey CR, Olausson AT, Applegate A, Reid A-A, Robison R, and Grose J The highly contagious nature of SARS-CoV-2 has led to several studies on the transmission of the virus. A little studied potential fomite of great concern in the community is currency, which has been shown to harbor microbial pathogens in several studies. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses in the United States have limited the use of banknotes in favor of credit cards. However, SARSCoV-2 has shown greater stability on plastic in several studies. Herein, the stability of SARS-CoV-2 at room temperature on banknotes, money cards, and coins was investigated. In vitro studies with live virus suggested SARS-CoV-2 was highly unstable on banknotes, showing an initial rapid reduction in viable virus and no viral detection by 24 hours. In contrast, SARS-CoV-2 displayed increased stability on money cards with live virus detected after 48 hours. Environmental swabbing of currency and money cards on and near the campus of Brigham Young University supported these results, with no detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA on banknotes, and a low level on money cards. However, no viable virus was detected on either. These preliminary results suggest that the use of 1 (Editor’s Note: This study from BYU reveals yet another of the endless and ill-advised subjective policies foisted secondary to the COVID not a pandemic (99% survival rate). Perhaps it is now safe to handle the mail without instituting universal infection control measures.) money cards over banknotes in order to slow the spread of this virus may be ill-advised. These findings should be investigated further through larger environmental studies involving more locations.1 0 References Plos One, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal. pone.0263025, accessed 10 AUG 2022.
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