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I was wondering how long a coronavirus (or viruses in general, because there's probably not that info available on coronavirus in food yet) inside food?

When Googling this question I find a lot of answers stating "There's no evidence that a coronavirus can survive on food containers an packaging" or "The ordinary precautions suffice: simply wash your vegetables and you're safe".

However... I'm interested about having the virus INSIDE food.

Let's say I have covid-19 (but am asymptomatic). I'm making something that requires contact with my hands (so possible contamination), and does NOT require baking. For example: marzipan. The virus particles might end up inside the marzipan.

How long will it last in there? I'm assuming the high sugar content will kill the virus cells rather quickly, but I'd rather be safe than sorry...

Tetsujin
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Opifex
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    A virus doesn't have cells. – brhans Dec 22 '20 at 18:43
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    Keep your hands clean? Don't touch your face? Don't sneeze on your prep table? I think a virus inside your food would be a real long shot. – moscafj Dec 22 '20 at 20:28
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    This is an interesting question, and to my limited knowledge the concern is not someone *eating* the food later, but *touching* the food later and then rubbing their eyes or nose (or touching other items, which other people then touch, thus spreading the virion). – RockPaperLz- Mask it or Casket Dec 22 '20 at 21:55
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    @moscafj “a virus inside your food” certainly isn't too long a shot. When not wearing a mask then normal breathing is quite sufficient to deposit with high probability some viruses in the food. When wearing a mask then having re-adjusted the mask without washing/sterilising hands is sufficient to leave viruses on them, of which with high probability some would end up in the food. Whether this is _something to worry_ about is, indeed, the question (and the answer is no). – leftaroundabout Dec 23 '20 at 10:06
  • @leftaroundabout I wouldn't worry about having the virus in my own food, and not even when I present the food to my wife or parents. However... Since this year we cannot invite family over for dinner (it is forbidden in my country), I was planning to prepare some small sweets for my grandparents and drop them off at the door. They are a risk-group, so I don't want to take any chances. – Opifex Dec 23 '20 at 16:49
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    @brhans We can understand OP's colloquial use of "cell" to mean [capsid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsid), certainly. – J... Dec 23 '20 at 19:24
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    Worth noting that while respiratory viruses don't tend to spread via food, enteric viruses like Norovirus can and do contaminate food and cause food-borne illness. – Dan Bryant Dec 23 '20 at 22:00
  • I voted to close this; the question is clearly a request for medical advice, despite having a couple of prospective answers. – FuzzyChef Dec 24 '20 at 05:40
  • @FuzzyChef there's nothing that indicates that this is a medical question. It is very closely related to hygiene and food-safety. Both which are tags on this SE. – Opifex Dec 25 '20 at 19:25
  • Except the main question is about how long the virus survives inside an uncooked food, rather than preventing it from getting there in the first place. That's a question of medical science that there's no good way for us to answer here. Anyway, if folks don't agree, don't reinforce my vote. – FuzzyChef Dec 26 '20 at 00:12

2 Answers2

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Kenji Lopez-Alt did a very in-depth article for Serious Eats about the coronavirus and food that is worth reading. There is no evidence of the coronavirus (or covid) being passed through food, because in general the virus would break down too quickly to be passed on. Viruses survive better on non-porous surfaces. The full article is here:

https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/03/food-safety-and-coronavirus-a-comprehensive-guide.html

franko
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    No evidence doesn't mean it can't happen. How quickly is “too quickly”? i.e., what's the estimated half-life? – wizzwizz4 Dec 23 '20 at 12:29
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    @wizzwizz4 When it comes to serious scientists, then "there is no evidence for that" is the most negative statement you can get. The reason is that the scientific method can not prove a negative. There is no evidence that invisible pink unicorns exist. Yet science can not disprove their existence or the hypothesis that you can contract SARS-CoV-2 from them. – Philipp Dec 23 '20 at 15:31
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    @Philipp In this case, you can certainly get stronger than "there is no evidence for that." For example, if scientists mixed SARS-CoV-2 into various kinds of foods, and then measured them an hour later and found that there are no detectable levels of viable virions, that would be stronger evidence against transmission via food than a simple "there is no evidence for that." – Tanner Swett Dec 23 '20 at 15:43
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    @TannerSwett They would then still say: "We performed the experiment and found that there is no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 can survive on food". That's simply how scientists communicate. The reason is that it still does not prove a negative. Maybe their detection method was flawed. Maybe they used the wrong food. Maybe there was some contamination in the lab which killed the virions. Maybe they tested the wrong virus strain. Maybe, maybe, maybe... This is why serious scientists never say "we disproved this". A small doubt always remains. So they say "there is no evidence". – Philipp Dec 23 '20 at 15:49
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    @Philipp I think the issue is that "there's no evidence for that" can mean "research was and found no evidence" but it could also mean "no research has been done". Ideally scientists should mean the former but it's common for doctors (in my experience) to use the phrase for both meanings interchangeably. – JimmyJames Dec 23 '20 at 16:04
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    @Philipp There is no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 survived the (hypothetical) experiment, which is (hypothetical) evidence that it can't survive an hour on (that kind of) food. If an experiment like that has been run, they'd have an estimated half life, but I haven't heard of such a thing. – wizzwizz4 Dec 23 '20 at 16:12
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    So all we've got is “there were no cases where that was definitely the means of contamination” and “the theory says it probably doesn't survive very long”. That's good enough for me, but it doesn't answer the question. – wizzwizz4 Dec 23 '20 at 16:13
  • @wizzwizz4 There's also no evidence I can sprout wings and fly.... – SnakeDoc Dec 23 '20 at 20:29
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    We cannot research everything. We cannot prevent everything. We have to decide what to work on, and given that we know for sure it spreads via airborne droplets, because there's tons of evidence for that, and given that we have no evidence to suggest it spreads through food, it's obvious that we should focus our research efforts on the things we do know for sure are a problem, rather than on dangers which we don't even know are real. – barbecue Dec 23 '20 at 21:46
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    @SnakeDoc It's not whether or not it survives. It's how long it survives _for_. (But barbecue has a point.) – wizzwizz4 Dec 23 '20 at 22:38
  • @wizzwizz4 my absurd comment was a rebuttal to your initial issue with "there's no evidence" not meaning it can't. With all the things that have come and gone with COVID this year (it can infect animals, wait no it can't, wait, yes it can, wait no it can't again...) we'd have at least some shred of evidence it can be transferred through food at this point in time. Lacking any evidence to suggest otherwise, in this case, is about as definitive as it will ever be. – SnakeDoc Dec 23 '20 at 23:38
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    @Philipp The scientific method proves negatives every day. Every positive statement can be phrased as a negative statement and vice versa. In this case doubting the precise meaning of "there is no evidence" was perfectly justified and even the most serious of scientists could be perfectly comfortable saying "There is evidence suggesting food can't transmit covid under such and such conditions", if that was true. – Nobody Dec 23 '20 at 23:40
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People have been studying how the coronavirus spreads. Because foodborne illnesses are common, it is standard procedure to check for patterns of foodborne transmission: That is, several people who ate the same thing all getting the disease afterwards. Because of the scope of the pandemic, we have a lot of data to check for such occurences and thus the absence of a single documented case is very strong empiric evidence that it can't happen under normal circumstances.

If the purely empirical data doesn't satisfy you, you will probably need to wait and hope someone does some experiments to explain why exactly transmission doesn't happen over food (or maybe someone would need to do an actual literature search instead of 5 minutes of googling). Covid-19 can survive the acidity of the stomach according to this open access study, so that easiest of possible explanations can sadly be ruled out. According to this page, there is a study that showed MERS-Cov can survive for some time in milk, but is deactivated by pasteurizing and no similar studies for Covid-19 exist.

Nobody
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