The images are compelling: Firetrucks in Tehran, Iran, or Manila, Philippines, spray the streets. Amazon tests a disinfectant fog inside a warehouse, hoping to calm workers’ fears and get them back on the job. TV commercials show health care workers cleaning chairs where blood donors sat. Families nervously wipe their mail and newly delivered groceries.
Most transmission of the virus comes from breathing in droplets that an infected person has just breathed out — not from touching surfaces where it may be lurking. “Transmission of novel coronavirus to persons from surfaces contaminated with the virus has not been documented,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes on its website.
“I’d personally be surprised if disinfecting outdoor spaces has any impact, but that’s more of a hunch based on first principles than a scientifically informed view,” Lipsitch said, because no one has studied the issue yet. And it will be difficult to study the effectiveness of such moves, he said on a call with journalists April 7, because “everyone is throwing a mix of interventions at the problem, as they should.
Claims made on Facebook that helicopters would be spraying disinfectant in New York City were false, The Associated Press reported. The virus probably can’t survive more than a few days on most surfaces, according to one recent study, and it’s not clear whether the concentration of the virus on a surface would be enough to transmit disease.