#[1]alternate [2]Has the Era of Overzealous Cleaning Finally Come to an
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Has the Era of Overzealous Cleaning Finally Come to an End?

  This week, the C.D.C. acknowledged what scientists have been saying for
  months: The risk of catching the coronavirus from surfaces is low.
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  A hotel room in Long Beach, Wash., being fogged with sanitizer.
  “There’s really no evidence that anyone has ever gotten Covid-19 by
  touching a contaminated surface,” one researcher noted.
  A hotel room in Long Beach, Wash., being fogged with sanitizer.
  “There’s really no evidence that anyone has ever gotten Covid-19 by
  touching a contaminated surface,” one researcher noted.Credit...Celeste
  Noche for The New York Times

  By Emily Anthes
  April 8, 2021

  When the coronavirus began to spread in the United States last spring,
  many experts warned of the danger posed by surfaces. [17]Researchers
  reported that the virus could survive for days on plastic or stainless
  steel, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised that
  if someone touched one of these contaminated surfaces — and then
  touched their eyes, nose or mouth — they could become infected.

  Americans responded in kind, wiping down groceries, quarantining mail
  and clearing drugstore shelves of Clorox wipes. Facebook closed two of
  its offices for a “[18]deep cleaning.” New York’s Metropolitan
  Transportation Authority began [19]disinfecting subway cars every
  night.

  But the era of “[20]hygiene theater” may have come to an unofficial end
  this week, when the C.D.C. updated its [21]surface cleaning guidelines
  and noted that the risk of contracting the virus from touching a
  contaminated surface was [22]less than 1 in 10,000.

  “People can be affected with the virus that causes Covid-19 through
  contact with contaminated surfaces and objects,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky,
  the director of the C.D.C., said at a White House briefing on Monday.
  “However, evidence has demonstrated that the risk by this route of
  infection of transmission is actually low.”

  The admission is long overdue, scientists say.

  “Finally,” said Linsey Marr, an expert on airborne viruses at Virginia
  Tech. “We’ve known this for a long time and yet people are still
  focusing so much on surface cleaning.” She added, “There’s really no
  evidence that anyone has ever gotten Covid-19 by touching a
  contaminated surface.”

  During the early days of the pandemic, many experts believed that the
  virus spread primarily through large respiratory droplets. These
  droplets are too heavy to travel long distances through the air but can
  fall onto objects and surfaces.

  In this context, a focus on scrubbing down every surface seemed to make
  sense. “Surface cleaning is more familiar,” Dr. Marr said. “We know how
  to do it. You can see people doing it, you see the clean surface. And
  so I think it makes people feel safer.”

  Image A “sanitization specialist” at an Applebee’s Grill and Bar in
  Westbury, N.Y., wiping down a used pen last year. Restaurants and other
  businesses have highlighted extra cleaning in their marketing since the
  pandemic began.
  A “sanitization specialist” at an Applebee’s Grill and Bar in Westbury,
  N.Y., wiping down a used pen last year. Restaurants and other
  businesses have highlighted extra cleaning in their marketing since the
  pandemic began.Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

  But over the last year, it has become increasingly clear that the virus
  spreads [23]primarily through the air — in both large and small
  droplets, which can remain aloft longer — and that scouring door
  handles and subway seats does little to keep people safe.

  “The scientific basis for all this concern about surfaces is very slim
  — slim to none,” said Emanuel Goldman, a microbiologist at Rutgers
  University, [24]who wrote last summer that the risk of surface
  transmission had been overblown. “This is a virus you get by breathing.
  It’s not a virus you get by touching.”
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  The C.D.C. [30]has previously acknowledged that surfaces are not the
  primary way that the virus spreads. But the agency’s statements this
  week went further.

  “The most important part of this update is that they’re clearly
  communicating to the public the correct, low risk from surfaces, which
  is not a message that has been clearly communicated for the past year,”
  said Joseph Allen, a building safety expert at the Harvard T.H. Chan
  School of Public Health.

  Catching the virus from surfaces remains theoretically possible, he
  noted. But it requires many things to go wrong: a lot of fresh,
  infectious viral particles to be deposited on a surface, and then for a
  relatively large quantity of them to be quickly transferred to
  someone’s hand and then to their face. “Presence on a surface does not
  equal risk,” Dr. Allen said.

  In most cases, cleaning with simple soap and water — in addition to
  hand-washing and mask-wearing — is enough to keep the odds of surface
  transmission low, the C.D.C.’s updated cleaning guidelines say. In most
  everyday scenarios and environments, people do not need to use chemical
  disinfectants, the agency notes.

  “What this does very usefully, I think, is tell us what we don’t need
  to do,” said Donald Milton, an aerosol scientist at the University of
  Maryland. “Doing a lot of spraying and misting of chemicals isn’t
  helpful.”

  Still, the guidelines do suggest that if someone who has Covid-19 has
  been in a particular space within the last day, the area should be both
  cleaned and disinfected.

  “Disinfection is only recommended in indoor settings — schools and
  homes — where there has been a suspected or confirmed case of Covid-19
  within the last 24 hours,” Dr. Walensky said during the White House
  briefing. “Also, in most cases, fogging, fumigation and wide-area or
  electrostatic spraying is not recommended as a primary method of
  disinfection and has several safety risks to consider.”

  And the new cleaning guidelines do not apply to health care facilities,
  which may require more intensive cleaning and disinfection.

  Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at George Mason
  University, said that she was happy to see the new guidance, which
  “reflects our evolving data on transmission throughout the pandemic.”

  But she noted that it remained important to continue doing some regular
  cleaning — and maintaining good hand-washing practices — to reduce the
  risk of contracting not just the coronavirus but any other pathogens
  that might be lingering on a particular surface.

  Dr. Allen said that the school and business officials he has spoken
  with this week expressed relief over the updated guidelines, which will
  allow them to pull back on some of their intensive cleaning regimens.
  “This frees up a lot of organizations to spend that money better,” he
  said.

  Schools, businesses and other institutions that want to keep people
  safe should shift their attention from surfaces to air quality, he
  said, and invest in improved ventilation and filtration.

  “This should be the end of deep cleaning,” Dr. Allen said, noting that
  the misplaced focus on surfaces has had real costs. “It has led to
  closed playgrounds, it has led to taking nets off basketball courts, it
  has led to quarantining books in the library. It has led to entire
  missed school days for deep cleaning. It has led to not being able to
  share a pencil. So that’s all that hygiene theater, and it’s a direct
  result of not properly classifying surface transmission as low risk.”

  Roni Caryn Rabin contributed reporting

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