Risk assessment of banknotes as a fomite of SARS‐CoV‐2 in cash payment transactions

  1. Jack F. Schijven
  2. Mark Wind
  3. Daniel Todt
  4. John Howes
  5. Barbora Tamele
  6. Eike Steinmann

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Abstract

The COVID 19 pandemic has triggered concerns and assumptions globally about transmission of the SARS‐CoV‐2 virus via cash transactions. This paper assesses the risk of contracting COVID‐19 through exposure to SARS‐CoV‐2 via cash acting as a fomite in payment transactions. A quantitative microbial risk assessment was conducted for a scenario assuming an infectious person at the onset of symptoms, when virion concentrations in coughed droplets are at their highest. This person then contaminates a banknote by coughing on it and immediately hands it over to another person, who might then be infected by transferring the virions with a finger from the contaminated banknote to a facial mucous membrane. The scenario considered transfer efficiency of virions on the banknote to fingertips when droplets were still wet and after having dried up and subsequently being touched by finger printing or rubbing the object. Accounting for the likelihood of the scenario to occur by considering (1) a local prevalence of 100 COVID‐19 cases/100,000 persons, (2) a maximum of about one‐fifth of infected persons transmit high virus loads, and (3) the numbers of cash transactions/person/day, the risk of contracting COVID‐19 via person‐to‐person cash transactions was estimated to be much lower than once per 39,000 days (107 years) for a single person. In the general populace, there will be a maximum of 2.6 expected cases/100,000 persons/day. The risk for a cashier at an average point of sale was estimated to be much less than once per 430 working days (21 months). The depicted scenario is a rare event, therefore, for a single person, the risk of contracting COVID‐19 via person‐to‐person cash transactions is very low. At a point of sale, the risk to the cashier proportionally increases but it is still low.

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  1. Version published to 10.1111/risa.13935
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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.12.03.21267258: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    For graphical presentation of the data package ggplot2 was used (Wickham,
    ggplot2
    suggested: (ggplot2, RRID:SCR_014601)
    Fitting of distributions and Monte Carlo simulation: Fitting distributions to data of V and k1,group and drawing 10 000 Monte Carlo samples of C, V, A, X, ⍰ and k1,group were conducted in Mathematica (version 12.3.0.0, Wolfram Inc, Champaign, IL, USA).
    Mathematica
    suggested: (Wolfram Mathematica, RRID:SCR_014448)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.12.03.21267258v1 on medRxiv