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CDC Study Shows Coronavirus Can Live on Floors, Shoes

A study of ICU and general wards in a hospital in Wuhan, China, at the height of the outbreak there shows a high rate of coronavirus on floors and medical staffers’ shoes.

An early release of a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a high level of coronavirus on the floors and medical workers’ shoes in a Chinese hospital that dealt with COVID-19 patients. The study, called Aerosol and Surface Distribution of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 in Hospital Wards, Wuhan, China, 2020, found that in Wuhan’s Huoshenshan Hospital, 94 percent of swabs taken from the ICU floor and 100 percent of swabs taken from one of the general wards used to treat patients with severe symptoms tested positive for coronavirus during the height of the epidemic. Researchers also found that half of the samples from the soles of the ICU medical staff shoes tested positive for the virus, concluding that “the soles of medical staff shoes might function as carriers.” Additionally, researchers found the virus on the floor of the hospital pharmacy where patients were not allowed. “As medical staff walk around the ward, the virus can be tracked all over the floor, as indicated by the 100 percent rate of positivity from the floor in the pharmacy, where there were no patients,” the authors write. The authors believe that respiratory droplets falling to the floors moved by both gravity and air flow caused the distribution of the virus.