If we take a step back and consider how frequently our phones come into contact with surfaces that countless people touch every single day and weigh that against the fact that our phones are intimately ingrained in our daily life, you can imagine why people might be freaking out about how to make sure that their phone doesn’t become a carrier of the virus.
It certainly has the potential of becoming a carrier of the virus. As the Wall Street Journal points out, it was revealed in a recent study that the coronavirus can survive on surfaces like glass, metal or plastic, materials most commonly used for smartphones, for a significant period of time ranging between two hours and nine days. Emma Hayhurst, a University of South Wales microbiologist, told the scribe that there’s no evidence that the coronavirus won’t transmit through a phone, which means that it very much remains a possibility until it can be ruled out conclusively.
The greatest infection risk is from coming into contact with a surface where the virus is present. Imagine you’re riding on the subway and you put your phone down on the seat beside you to tie your shoe. You’re not aware that the person who got off at the previous stop before you got on had sneezed or coughed at that same spot. Your phone could, at least in theory, pick up the virus from that spot. The same goes for a variety of other scenarios, be it the checkout counter at a grocery store where you’re paying with your phone or the boarding card scanner at the airport.
All of us have been using phones long enough to know that our phones don’t really cause us to get sick. We don’t think about disinfecting them, the most we’ll do is wipe them on the sleeve of our shirts or really rub them clean once in a while with a microfiber cloth. We use them with reckless abandon, placing them down at public places or handing them to strangers when we want a picture taken without much concern. However, these are uncertain times and seeing how rapidly the virus is spreading, it would be better to follow these steps just out of an abundance of caution.
