The New York Times looked — exhaustively — at that question. While it is impossible to say for certain that the coronavirus cannot be transmitted from the letters, flyers and packages in the mail, especially given possible mutations of the disease and the wide variety of papers and cardboards, it appears not.

David Partenheimer, a spokesman for the Postal Service, noted that the surgeon general, Dr. Jerome M. Adams, along with the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization, has “indicated that there is currently no evidence that COVID-19 is being spread through the mail.”

The NYT article includes the history of quarantines (including the word’s origin) and sequestering the mail to make sure it didn’t carry disease.

“The bottom line is that there is some hypothetical risk of viable viruses surviving on mail,” Dr. James O. Lloyd-Smith of UCLA said. “But given the time periods involved, this seems like a pretty minimal risk to the general public.”

One of the experts interview by the Times simply recommends washing your hands with soap and water after handling your mail. “I want to preserve the good sanitizers for risky things, and hand washing works just as well as spraying,” said Ben Chapman of North Carolina State University.

Lloyd-Smith says he’s more worried about the mail sorters and carriers who are handling the mail as much as 12 hours a day.