Mechanistic theory predicts the effects of temperature and humidity on inactivation of SARS-CoV-2 and other enveloped viruses
- Princeton University, United States
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, United States
- University of California, Los Angeles, United States
- Virginia Tech, United States
Abstract
Ambient temperature and humidity strongly affect inactivation rates of enveloped viruses, but a mechanistic, quantitative theory of these effects has been elusive. We measure the stability of SARS-CoV-2 on an inert surface at nine temperature and humidity conditions and develop a mechanistic model to explain and predict how temperature and humidity alter virus inactivation. We find SARS-CoV-2 survives longest at low temperatures and extreme relative humidities (RH); median estimated virus half-life is >24 hours at 10C and 40% RH, but ~1.5 hours at 27C and 65% RH. Our mechanistic model uses fundamental chemistry to explain why inactivation rate increases with increased temperature and shows a U-shaped dependence on RH. The model accurately predicts existing measurements of five different human coronaviruses, suggesting that shared mechanisms may affect stability for many viruses. The results indicate scenarios of high transmission risk, point to mitigation strategies, and advance the mechanistic study of virus transmission.
Data availability
All code and data needed to reproduce results and figures is archived on Github (https://github.com/dylanhmorris/sars-cov-2-temp-humidity/) and on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4093264), and licensed for reuse, with appropriate attribution/citation, under a BSD 3-Clause Revised License. This includes all original data generated in the experiments and all data collected and used for meta-analysis.
Article and author information
Author details
Neeltje Van Doremalen
James O Lloyd-Smith
Funding
National Science Foundation (CCF 1917819)
- Dylan H Morris
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (D18AC00031)
- Amandine Gamble
- James O Lloyd-Smith
UCLA AIDS Institute and Charity Treks
- Amandine Gamble
- James O Lloyd-Smith
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Intramural Research Program)
- Kwe Claude Yinda
- Trenton Bushmaker
- Robert J Fischer
- M Jeremiah Matson
- Neeltje Van Doremalen
- Vincent J Munster
National Science Foundation (DEB-1557022)
- James O Lloyd-Smith
Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (RC‐2635)
- James O Lloyd-Smith
National Science Foundation (CBET-1705653)
- Qishen Huang
- Peter J Vikesland
- Linsey C Marr
National Science Foundation (CBET-2029911)
- Qishen Huang
- Peter J Vikesland
- Linsey C Marr
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- C. Brandon Ogbunugafor, Yale University, United States
Version history
- Received: December 18, 2020
- Accepted: February 20, 2021
- Accepted Manuscript published: April 27, 2021 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: July 13, 2021 (version 2)
Copyright
This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.
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Mechanistic theory predicts the effects of temperature and humidity on inactivation of SARS-CoV-2 and other enveloped viruses
eLife 10:e65902.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.65902
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