Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

February 8, 2021

SARS-CoV-2 Transmission Risk from Sports Equipment (STRIKE)

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[Pre-print, not peer-reviewed] A study investigating the potential of shared sporting equipment transmission vectors of SARS-CoV-2 during the reintroduction of sports found that it was unlikely that equipment is a major route of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Ten different types of equipment were inoculated with 40μl droplets containing clinically relevant high and low concentrations of live SARS-CoV-2 virus. Materials were swabbed at different time points (1, 5, 15, 30, 90 minutes), and the amount of live SARS-CoV-2 recovered at each time point was recorded. At one minute, SARS-CoV-2 virus was recovered in 7/10 types of equipment with the low dose inoculum, while mean recovery of virus from the high dose inoculum fell from 0.74% at 1 minute to 0.39% at 15 minutes and to 0.003% at 90 minutes. Virus was less transferrable from materials such as a tennis ball, red cricket ball and cricket glove. 

Edwards et al. (Feb 8, 2021). SARS-CoV-2 Transmission Risk from Sports Equipment (STRIKE). Pre-print downloaded Feb 8 from  https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.04.21251127v1