#COVID19 Journal Club: “The effect of temperature on persistence of SARS-CoV-2 on common surfaces”

Here’s the kind of article that we’ve been asking for since March… looking at the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 on various surfaces (including paper money) under various conditions.  I was excited when I saw the title and some of the media buzz about this paper.  But then I looked a bit deeper.  So “The effect of …

#COVID19; Of fomites and nosocomial infections

(h/t to Jonathan Eisen for the original article) Virtually all the discussion these days is about aerosol/airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2, and probably rightly so… there’s a lot of evidence that these are the primary routes of transmission.   But as a recent Medscape article admonishes; “Don’t Forget the Fomites as Face-to-Face Care Ramps Up“.  It’s still …

#COVID19 Preprint Journal Club “Transmission routes of Covid-19 virus in the Diamond Princess Cruise ship”

Given all the media attention this ship got, I think this is a really interesting article; “Transmission routes of Covid-19 virus in the Diamond Princess Cruise ship“.  The assumption among many folks is that there might have been airborne transmission between staterooms on the ship, considering the number of people that were infected.  This article …

#COVID19 modes of transmission and fomites (Twitter comments)

I have been trying to collect information about the new coronavirus and transmission via fomites (objects or materials such as door handles, clothing, phones, etc).  Yesterday I posted to Twitter asking for input and got a large collection of useful responses. See these two tweets and the responses to them.  I highlight some key responses …

New papers on Microbiology of the Built Environment, September 25, 2016

Microbes and buildings The Microbiome of Green Design: Sustainable building practices may have unforeseen consequences for microbial communities and human health – Carolyn Beans – BioScience ($40 for 1 day) Just as our bodies teem with microbial life, so, too, do the homes, offices, schools, and other indoor spaces where we spend the majority of our …

New papers and articles on microbiology of the built environment, August 17, 2015

Science papers about mosquitoes in urban parks and purses as fomites, and popular press articles about dirty menus in restaurants and filtering bacteria with book pages. Here is a good song to match the latter two: Turn the Page by Metallica. Diversity and abundance of mosquitoes (Diptera:Culicidae) in an urban park: Larval habitats and temporal variation – Antônio …

“Black death was not spread by rat fleas, say researchers”

Yersinia pestis, Direct Fluorescent Antibody Stain (DFA), 200x Magnification. CDC 2057. Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. “Black death was not spread by rat fleas, say researchers” reported in the Guardian Reportedly it was “pneumonic” rather than “bubonic” as previously thought. Fortunately it was a very, very long time ago, although there have been many …