Sterilizing your grocery store and take-out purchases

A video on staying safe while bringing food, take-out, etc. into your home.

We’re all required to stay home except to buy food and necessary supplies, and these trips to the grocery store and take-out places increase our risk of exposure and of bringing the virus home.  In this video, a physician describes how to make sure that the groceries that you bring home are safe using “sterile technique”.  Watch the video, Sterilizing your grocery store and take-out purchases. There are other sources such as Dr. Fauci who indicate that this level of cleaning is probably not necessary. Do what you feel is necessary to protect your family.

In addition to some great info on sterilizing your stuff, he also mentions the following:

Virus lifetimes:

Airborne/aerosolized: 3 hours after virus particles are coughed/sneezed/breathed/etc. into the air.

Cardboard: 1 day (he initially says 1 hour but later says in the video 1 day and he also published a correction underneath the video.)

Plastic & metal: 3 days

Food:  Coronavirus does not do well in food and is less likely to survive in hot food. Therefore, food that has been delivered is probably safe.  The packing, however, should be considered to be unsafe as described for the materials above.

However, despite the above, he also mentions that the CDC found active Corona virus particles have been found on cruise ships 17 days later although this could be some specific condition unique to cruise ships. I interpret this to mean always be careful, assume nothing.  That and I’ll never go on a cruise ship.