Survival of human rhinovirus type 14 dried onto nonporous inanimate surfaces: effect of relative humidity and suspending medium

Authors:
  • YKYasmin G. Karim
    Yasmin G. Karim
  • VSV. Susan Springthorpe
    V. Susan Springthorpe
  • CJC. M. Johnson-Lussenburg
    C. M. Johnson-Lussenburg
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Abstract
To study the survival of human rhinovirus 14 on environmental surfaces, each stainless steel disk (1 cm in diameter) was contaminated with 10 μL (about 105 plaque-forming units) of the virus suspended in either 1χ tryptose phosphate broth (TPB), 5 mg/mL of bovine mucin in normal saline, or undiluted human nasal discharge. The inoculum was dried in a laminar flow cabinet for 1 h under ambient conditions. The disks were then placed in a glass chamber (20 ± 1 °C) with the relative humidity at either low (20 ± 5%), medium (50 ± 5%), or high (80 ± 5%) level. At appropriate intervals, the disk to be tested was placed in 1 mL of tryptose phosphate broth and the eluate titrated in A-5 HeLa cells. When the virus was suspended in either tryptose phosphate broth, mucin, or the nasal discharge and subjected to initial drying, there was a 3.0 ± 1.0, 82.0 ± 6.7, and 89.0 ± 3.0% loss in virus infectivity, respectively. The half-life of the TPB-suspended virus was about 14 h at the high relative humidity as compared with < 2 h at the other two relative humidity levels. The half-lives for the mucin-suspended virus at the high, medium, and low relative humidity were 1.42, 0.55, and 0.24 h, respectively; the corresponding values for the nasal discharge suspended virus being 0.17, 0.25, and 0.09 h.

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