Nurse wearing face mask holding a positive blood test result for the new rapidly spreading Coronavirus

Not much was known about COVID-19 when it began harming people across the world in early 2020. For example, a study published in the famed New England Journal of Medicine in March suggested COVID-19 could live on plastic for up to 72 hours and cardboard for 24 hours. A study that was published in The Lancet a month later suggested that COVID-19 could live on stainless steel for up to week under certain conditions. Now that more information has been gathered, some experts believe that COVID-19 can stay on a surface for a few weeks under certain, controlled conditions according to Good Housekeeping.

Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Researcher Organization (CSIRO) studied SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) on stainless steel, paper money and glass and found that the virus could stay on these surfaces for 28 days. Additionally, other commonly-touched surfaces like the glass screens on smartphones showed they could harbor germs for almost four weeks in environments around 68 degrees.

The CSIRO study, which was published in Virology Journal in October, could help healthcare professionals to better understand how the virus behaves in a clinical setting, but doesn't really pertain to the setting janitors work in, Dr. Sandra Kesh, an infectious disease expert at Westmed Medical Group, tells Good Housekeeping.

"The laboratory conditions that they perform the study in are not the same as what we experience in the real world," said Kesh.

To read the rest of Good Housekeeping report, click here.