Can Covid-19 spread using cash? The European Central Bank has published a recent study on the matter: “Catch me (if you can): assessing the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission via euro cash” as No 259 / July 2021 in its “Occasional Paper Series”.
The research starts with the statement that on the one hand the pandemic has led to a “significant increase in demand for cash as a store of value but a decrease in the use of cash in transactions”. The central question was, though: how long does the virus survive on cash and can it be transmitted onto humans leading to a Covid-19 infection?
The results of new stability tests were clear: SARS-CoV-2 can survive up to several days on banknotes and coins, but only when the initial viral load is very high (which does not correspond to a real-life situation) – while the surving virus load will be very low.
In order to result in an infection, the virus then has to be transferred to human skin and from there to the mucosal routes. As test demonstrate this is big bar for the virus and the paper comes to the result that the risk of transfer is very low.
If you want to read the paper in detail you can download it from our website.
Last year we published an article that came to a similar conclusion: “Do we spread the coronavirus via cash?”
You will find in-depth articles on related issues in our first MintWorld Compendium: Cash and Good Health.
