MARILYNN MARCHIONE
AP Chief Medical Writer
The new coronavirus can live in the air for several hours and on some surfaces for as long as two to three days, tests by U.S. government and other scientists have found.
Their work, published Wednesday, suggests that the virus can spread through the air as well as from touching things that were contaminated by others who have it, in addition to direct person-to-person contact.
Since emerging in China late last year, the new virus has infected more than 120,000 people worldwide and caused more than 4,300 deaths -- far more than the 2003 SARS outbreak caused by a genetically similar virus.
For this study, researchers used a nebulizer device to put samples of the new virus into the air, imitating what might happen if an infected person coughed
