Survival of Influenza Virus on Hands

Human-to-human transmission of influenza virus can occur through the airborne route via respiratory droplets, but also through direct contact with hands contaminated by respiratory droplets. However, little information has been available about how long influenza viruses can survive on hands.

To explore this issue, researchers in Switzerland contaminated the fingers of six volunteers with various volumes of human respiratory mucus spiked with various concentrations of an H3N2 and an H1N1 (2009) influenza strain. After periods of ≤30 minutes, recovery of infectious viral particles from the fingers was determined using cell culture.

Although infectious H3N2 and H1N1 (2009) viruses could be recovered from all contaminated fingers after 1 minute, …