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Cold and flu viruses: How long can they live outside the body?

Viruses that cause the common cold, the flu and COVID-19 may be able to infect someone for several hours to days. It depends on factors such as:

You can catch a virus if you touch something that a person with the virus sneezed or coughed on minutes before.

But close contact with a person who has one of these viruses is the most common way they spread. This includes shaking hands or being close enough to breathe in the virus that a person sends out with a cough or sneeze.

Getting COVID-19 and flu vaccines helps lower the chance that you will catch or spread these viruses or get seriously ill from or die of the illnesses they cause.

You can lower your risk of catching viruses that cause colds, flu and COVID-19 in other ways too:

If you’re sick, stay home for at least 24 hours after your fever is gone. That lowers your chance of infecting others. And if you have symptoms of COVID-19, test for the infection. If you know you’ve been exposed to the virus that causes COVID-19, test five days after you came in contact with the virus.

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