Hotel-room surfaces can harbor viruses
By Nathan Seppa
From San Francisco, at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy
Rhinovirus, which is responsible for roughly half of all common colds, survives on surfaces in hotel rooms for hours and can be transferred from there to people, a study shows.
J. Owen Hendley, a pediatrician at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, and his colleagues obtained mucus samples from 15 people who had active rhinovirus infections. The scientists then invited each participant to spend a night in a hotel room. Each person was instructed to remain awake in the room for at least 5 hours in the evening and to spend at least 2 hours there the next day.