A study once found that the hepatitis C virus (HCV) can remain infective for six weeks on ordinary household surfaces. You can see the free full text, or a summary for busy clinicians.
What happened in the seventh week? Did the virus cease to remain viable, or did the study just end suddenly?
From part B of this figure, it looks to me like the study just ended suddenly. But I'm not a biologist, so I'd like to hear your opinion.
The place to find this information would be the Methods section of the paper.
We spotted 33 µL of plasma spiked with HCVcc on the 24-well plates. They were either immediately tested for viable virus or stored at 4°C, 22°C, and 37°C for up to 6 weeks before testing.
They tested their samples for (up to) 6 weeks. At the time of the 6th week they still found infectious virus. They did not test samples beyond 6 weeks so they can't say anything about infection past that time.
