Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/1JIlWJO7lCA   Omicron lives on plastic for up to 10 days and on skin for as long as 28 hours.  For plastic that’s 3.5 times longer than for the original strain and for skin that’s 2.5 times longer.  Japanese infectious disease and molecular biology researchers now report these findings on biorxiv.org, the pre-publication website, after comparing the viability of CoVid’s principal variants on plastic and skin.   For plastic, Omicron lives for an average of 8 days compared with 4.8 days for Delta, 2.5 days for Gamma, 6.5 days for Omicron’s cousin Beta, and 2.3 days for the original CoVid.  On skin, compare Omicron’s 21 hour persistence with 16.8 hours for Delta, 11 hours for Gamma, 19 hours for Beta, and 8.6 hours for original CoVid.   The good news: alcohol disinfectants do kill Omicron, and the 70% isopropyl alcohol will knock it dead in less than 15 seconds.  That being the case, do use it on your hands, plastic items, and, frankly, any other potentially contaminated surfaces.