I have at least two friends who claim to know people who have gotten STDs from a hotel sheet and bath towel. I’m assuming they meant crabs (which even though it’s an STD, that’s a bit misleading in this context). There’s no way to catch anything viral from a dirty hotel room, right?
It depends on who you share the hotel room with.
Perhaps if you find a used condom somewhere in the room and decide to play with it.
And there is the possibility of hantavirus (not an STD) if there are a lot of mouse droppings.
Herpes. Towels.
But the herpes virus would not stay alive that long on a towel.
The Molluscum contagiosum virus can be caught from towels and bedclothes, and apparently from toilet seats.
If Ron Jeremy offers to split the cost of a hotel room with you, just give him a polite “no.”
Only damp towels. If the towel is completely dry, the virus has been outside the body long enough to be dead. Is it remotely, theoretically possible? I suppose. Stranger things have happened. But is it likely or plausible? No. Worry about scabies and bed bugs before you worry about herpes from a clean dry hotel room towel.
Molluscum contagiosum does live outside the body for a frustratingly long time, and it is the bane of schools and daycare centers and retirement homes for just this reason. It’s also sexually transmissible, so yes, that is one STD you could pick up from a hotel room, even if you stayed there alone. Assuming, of course, that the room was colonized with the virus and not well disinfected between guests. They do die from common cleaning products, so it’s not high on my list of concerns from a good hotel, but I’ve been in some pretty scary motels where I wouldn’t be surprised… (I travel with my own antimicrobial room spray for just this reason.)
But the same can be said of an office space, a bus, the supermarket… There’s nothing particularly nefarious about a hotel room that makes it more likely than any other public space to have become colonized with m contagiosum.
I’d say hotel rooms are pretty notorious for being places to catch STD’s, but only because so many people with multiple sexual partners tend to use them for sex. 