One Third of Hotel Room Surfaces Harbor Cold Virus

Geezer has some good news for germophobes: they’re right to worry about cold germs, at least as far as hotel rooms are concerned. The BBC reports on research conducted at the University of Virginia that looked for contamination by the common Rhinovirus in hotel rooms and found that the virus was easily transferred to 35 percent of the surfaces touched. Door handles, pens, light switches, TV remote controls
and taps were all found to be contaminated as much as 18 hours after
first contact. BBC reports that Rhinovirus contamination of the sampled surfaces – 10 each in 15 hotel rooms – ranged from 0-80 percent, and that people who touched the contaminated surfaces during
everyday activities, such as answering the telephone or turning on the
light, had a 50 percent or one in two chance of picking up the virus. The rate went up to 60 percent when surfaces had become
contaminated just an hour earlier and down to 33 percent when surfaces had
been contaminated for 18 hours.
Read more from the BBC.