According to a study, the Omicron variety of coronavirus can survive on the skin for more than 21 hours and for more than eight days on plastic surfaces, which could explain why it spreads quicker than other variants.
Researchers from Japan’s Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine investigated the differences in viral environmental stability between the Wuhan-originating SARS-CoV-2 strain and all other variants of concern (VOCs).
The yet-to-be peer-reviewed study that was posted recently on the preprint repository BioRxiv, found that the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants exhibited more than two-fold longer survival on plastic and skin surfaces than the original strain.
“The high environmental stability of these VOCs could increase the risk of contact transmission and contribute to their spread,” the authors of the study said.
“This study showed that Omicron has the highest environmental stability among VOCs, which might be one of the factors that have allowed the variant to replace the Delta variant and spread rapidly,” they said.
The study shows that on plastic surfaces, the average survival times of the original strain and the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants were 56 hours, 191.3 hours, 156.6 hours, 59.3 hours, and 114 hours, respectively.
However, the Omicron variant could survive for 193.5 hours, according to the researchers.
The differences in viral environmental stability between the SARS-CoV-2 strain that originated in Wuhan and all variants of concern were investigated by researchers from Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine in Japan (VOCs).
Although Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants showed a slight increase in ethanol resistance in response to increased environmental stability, all VOCs on the skin surface were completely inactivated by 15 second exposure to 35 per cent ethanol.
“Therefore, it is highly recommended that current infection control (hand hygiene) practices use disinfectants… as proposed by the World Health Organization,” the researchers added.
The Omicron variant is currently a major concern owing to the rapidly increasing number of infected patients worldwide.
