Are respiratory diseases spread through items?

The answer is yes, but the probability of this kind of transmission is much lower than droplet and aerosol transmission, and the risk is extremely low in most daily scenarios.

When COVID-19 was prevalent two years ago, we all still have memories of many cases of human-to-human transmission. A friend of mine had never been to a risk area or met a positive patient. Just because he received a piece of imported cherries transported at low temperature, he grabbed the fruit and ate it without washing his hands after unpacking it, and he became infected the next day.

Many people may be wondering, aren't respiratory disease viruses mainly spread through breathing? How can you be infected by touching something? In fact, this essentially belongs to the category of "contact transmission" - the droplets expelled by the patient's cough and sneeze touch the surface of the object. If the pathogen is touched by other people's hands before it is inactivated, and then touches the mucous membranes such as the mouth, nose, and eyes, the infection may be completed. To put it bluntly, the pathogen takes a ride on the "hand" and takes a detour into the respiratory tract.

However, practitioners in different fields have different views on the actual risks of this transmission path. Researchers in the field of disease control have conducted experiments and found that influenza viruses can survive on smooth plastic and stainless steel surfaces for 24 to 48 hours, and respiratory syncytial virus can survive on desktops at room temperature for more than 6 hours. In places such as hospital fever clinics and closed script killing halls where people are densely populated and the pathogen load is high, the risk of item transmission is not low, and there have been related records of cluster transmission. ； However, the view of many frontline respiratory doctors is that in daily settings such as ordinary homes and regular offices, as long as the ventilation is normal and there are no clear infected persons visiting, even if there are pathogens on the items, most of them have been inactivated, or the load is too low to cause infection. There is no need to be overly anxious. Spraying alcohol to disinfect everything you see may irritate the respiratory mucosa, which in turn reduces your own protection.

The last time I took my nephew to an indoor playground, I saw a little boy with a runny nose playing with blocks for almost half an hour. Then he turned around and gave the blocks to the little niece next to him. The little girl rubbed her eyes within two minutes of playing with the blocks. That night, her mother posted on WeChat that her child had a fever of 38 degrees, which is how he was most likely infected.

In fact, there is no need to regard article transmission as a scourge, and don't take it completely seriously. After touching public items such as elevator buttons and subway handrails when going out, remember not to rub your nose or eyes casually, wash your hands before touching food when you get home, and you can basically keep out most of the risk of transmission.