Skip to main content
Close Menu
searcharrowarrow

How Long Does the Coronavirus Last on Clothing?

LAUNDRY TIPS

Avoid close contact with people. Sanitize your hands after touching surfaces. Don’t touch your face. Wash your hands more often. 

With all of the guidelines coming out about how to prevent getting and spreading COVID-19, it’s easy to see why you might suddenly be paranoid about touching anything at all – including your clothing. Does the coronavirus live on clothing? And if so, for how long? What are the guidelines for handling your own clothes and your family’s laundry? How worried do you need to be? Take a look at what you need to know about the coronavirus and clothing.

Can Coronavirus Live on Clothing?

If you’re wondering whether or not coronavirus can live on clothing, the answer is probably yes. While there aren’t yet any scientific findings of how long coronavirus lives on clothing specifically, there are scientific findings of how long coronavirus lives on other porous material like cardboard. 

The current research suggests that the virus may live for up to 24 hours on cardboard, although it’s important to remember that tests done in a lab under ideal conditions don’t necessarily completely reflect what you might find in real-world conditions. Fluctuations in conditions like weather, temperature, and humidity might cause the virus to die a little faster or live a little longer in real-world conditions. 

Though cardboard is, of course, not the same thing as clothing material, it does have some similar characteristics. It is not a giant leap to conclude that the coronavirus may live on laundry for at least some time after contact with the virus is made.

How Worried Should You Be? 

That does not mean that you should be terrified of touching your laundry, however. Unlike hard surfaces, porous surfaces like clothing can trap the virus, making it difficult to transfer from the material into a human host. Essentially, the virus can get stuck in a porous surface. What’s more, the fabric can contribute to the drying of the lipid membrane around the virus, and once the lipid membrane is dried out, the virus is no longer infective. This doesn’t mean that you don’t need to be worried about the virus on clothing at all; it just means that you don’t need to panic. 

How to Handle Laundry

In general, you should simply wash and dry your clothes like you normally do. You’ve heard all of the guidelines about washing your hands, and you know that soap and water does the best job of destroying the virus – even better than hand sanitizer. Your laundry detergent and the water in your washing machine will do the same job of destroying any coronavirus on your clothes. 

If you’re a medical professional, a caregiver, or you’ve been in contact with someone who has tested positive or is displaying coronavirus symptoms, then you should take some extra precautions. Use gloves when handling any laundry that’s been in close contact with an infected person, and use the hottest water setting available on those clothes.