Omicron may hang around longer on surfaces than original virus, early findings suggest
CBC
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, it felt like the virus was everywhere — and on everything.
Some people washed their mail or wore gloves to the grocery store, while policymakers cordoned off playgrounds and encouraged businesses to scrub every surface.
But as the months passed, scientific consensus began to crystallize, suggesting some of those precautions might be missing the bigger picture of how the SARS-CoV-2 virus transmits.
The main way people get infected, most leading public health officials and scientists now agree, is through exposure to this virus through the air, not through contaminated surfaces known scientifically as "fomites."
Yet Omicron, the highly-contagious variant known for slipping around some of our best defences, might be surviving longer on everyday objects than its early predecessor — raising questions about which basic precautions to prevent surface-based transmission might still be warranted.
That's a key finding from a new pre-print paper from researchers at the University of Hong Kong's school of public health, which is published online but has not yet been peer-reviewed.
After conducting lab-based research, the team found Omicron "is more stable than the ancestral SARS-CoV-2 on different surfaces."
"Our findings imply that (Omicron) has an increased likelihood to be transmitted by the fomite route," the researchers concluded.
"Hand hygiene and frequent disinfection of common touch surfaces in public areas are highly recommended."
Building off other recent research which showed Omicron's heavily-mutated spike protein is more stable than the ancestral strain, and their own previous findings on SARS-CoV-2's level of infectiousness on various surfaces, the Hong Kong team explored what would happen if droplets containing Omicron — the BA.1 lineage, specifically — were applied to surfaces like stainless steel, paper, and glass.
In each instance, infectious amounts of Omicron were recovered for longer amounts of time than the samples of the original virus.
On several types of paper, infectious amounts of ancestral SARS-CoV-2 were only recoverable for five to 15 minutes — compared to more than 30 minutes for Omicron.
On smooth surfaces, Omicron lasted more than a week, while infectious amounts of the original virus were recovered up to just four days on polypropylene plastic and stainless and up to seven days on glass.
"More evidence is needed to account for the increased transmissibility of (Omicron) observed in various community studies," the researchers wrote.
RCMP say a man who was reported missing near Key First Nation has been found deceased.
Christy Morin says life was never the same in Alberta Avenue after the fires began.
It's small things, like a cigarette or a pair of clean socks, Rachel Montour says, that can go a long way to make you feel more human when you’re out on the street.
Several dozen members of Windsor's Chaldean community and its supporters celebrated in the cold at the corner of Marentette Avenue and Wyandotte Street East Friday, as city officials gave a secondary name to the section of Marentette between Wyandotte and Tuscarora Street: Chaldean Way.
Allison Hill says she tries to make people’s experience at the Thunder Bay Food Bank “as pleasant as possible.”
Two years after a man went missing in Scarborough, Toronto police are renewing the investigation in hopes that the public will bring forward more information.
A musical instrument created in Guelph, Ont., has been thrust onto the international stage — or rather, screen.
More than 1,000 Maritime Electric customers are without power after high winds blew across the Island Friday night into Saturday.
The Supreme Court of Canada is deliberating a case that could shape the way sentences are handed down in cases where both the offender and victim are Indigenous, which some Nunavut lawyers say could have ramifications for the Inuit-majority territory.
A man barricaded in a former church in Welland, Ont., was taken into custody early Saturday, nearly 24 hours into a standoff that began over a fence dispute.
Peel police are investigating after a Friday night shooting in Mississauga left one person dead, police said.
Another busy construction season has come to an end in London, and the city is already looking ahead to next spring when a slew of new projects are expected to begin.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has begun to lay out publicly what he sees as boundaries when dealing with China, as his government wades into a new relationship with the economic giant.