After you finish quarantining for 5 days, will washing your clothes in the washer/dryer in hot water remove the COVID virus?

COVID is primarily passed along by breathing in the virus carried in airborne water vapor (i.e., moist breath). There have been very few cases of it being transferred by touching an infected surface.

With that said, research is showing that the virus can survive for around a week on clothing and hard surfaces. So, it’s a good idea to do a good cleaning after isolating for five days. Normal clothes and linen washing and wiping surfaces with a disinfectant wipe should be sufficient.

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/how-covid-spreads.html (CDC)
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/msphere.00316-21 (American Society for Microbiology)
https://www.journalofhospitalinfection.com/article/S0195-6701(20)30046-3/fulltext (Journal of Hospital Infection)
https://health.ucdavis.edu/coronavirus/covid-19-information/coronavirus-mistakes (UC Davis Medicine)
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/disinfecting-building-facility.html (CDC)

Updated 07/06/2022