Inside STAT: Could copper surfaces help prevent infections in hospitals?

The Covid-19 pandemic is highlighting an issue that hospitals have long struggled with, which is keeping hospitalized patients from getting further sick. Now, a growing chorus of researchers is suggesting a way out of this problem: resurfacing stainless steel surfaces with copper to prevent the spread of pathogens and the more than 2 million hospital-acquired infections that occur in the U.S. every year. Copper's antimicrobial properties have been known for a while, and in the early days of the pandemic, some researchers showed that while SARS-CoV-2 sticks around on stainless steel for several days, the virus can't survive past a few hours on copper. STAT contributor Andrew Zaleski has more here.