Coronavirus: Death toll climbs to 106 as China tightens measures

[Warpy]

24. Most pathogens are killed by UV light

and some are killed by drying. Smallpox, for instance, can be kept intact on surfaces in carefully controlled laboratory conditions only for a matter of hours, it has to be grown in human tissue. HIV is also a very fragile virus, which is why no one has caught it from a toilet seat and transmission by needle stick is only three tenths of a percent.

All I could find about it concerned the SARS and MERS outbreaks of some years ago. Apparently one strain did survive drying on surfaces but was killed by the usual hospital disinfectants. This bug is a different strain from those, and I'm afraid its survival when dried is unknown, or at least unpublished.

Since the outbreak is so tiny, relatively speaking, I wouldn't be paranoid yet. It appears to be transmitted only by close contact with infected and symptomatic people. We just won't know more for a week or two, like whether or not sharing an airplane for 8 hours or more with someone who is infected but not symptomatic is adequate for transmission.