Risk of COVID-19 transmission from cash particularly low: study – CTV
July 29, 2021
TORONTO — Amid fears of transmitting COVID-19 via the handling of cash, some retailers across Canada enacted no-cash policies in the early months of the pandemic. A recent study, however, has shown that the risk of spreading the disease when you open your wallet could be quite low.
Experts from the European Central Bank, in collaboration with the Department of Medical and Molecular Virology at Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany, tested how long coronaviruses, including COVID-19, could last on banknotes and coins, and the likelihood of being infected from handling cash. Notes, coins and credit-card-like PVC plates were contaminated with virus solutions of different concentrations and then touched by test subjects with their fingerprints, while still wet or already dried, to determine how long infectious virus was still detectable. Samples contaminated with COVID-19 were touched with artificial skin.
“We saw that immediately after the liquid had dried, there was practically no transmission of infectious virus,” Dr. Daniel Todt, one of the lead researchers, said in a news release. “Under realistic conditions, infection with SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) from cash is very unlikely.”
