Sign up for our special edition newsletter to get a daily update on the coronavirus pandemic.

The MTA’s costly, 24/7 COVID-19 cleaning regiment isn’t going away anytime soon, officials said Wednesday — despite evidence that the deadly virus rarely spreads via surfaces.

“The scientists have not said that there are no cases transmitted by contact with objects. What they said is that aerosols account for a greater than was expected percentage of cases,” Chairman Pat Foye said Wednesday in response to a reporter’s question about the cleaning efforts, which began before the CDC concluded the virus “does not spread easily” through surfaces or objects.

The CDC’s guidelines on surface transmission, published in late May, still acknowledges that it “may be possible” to transmit COVID-19 by touching surfaces. One study released in October found the virus had the ability to remain on surfaces for as many as 28 days.

Foye said that was enough to justify the cleaning blitz, which has cost his agency hundreds of millions of dollars.

“We’re going to continue that disinfecting regime,” the appointee of Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

“I think it’s helpful in terms of minimizing risk to our customers and our employees.”

Foye and Interim Transit President Sarah Feinberg also defended the MTA’s ongoing four-hour nightly shutdowns, which Cuomo instituted in May for the cleaning and to clear trains and platforms of homeless people and other stragglers.

While Feinberg conceded that the 24-hour subway “is a piece of being a 24-hour city,” she told reporters the nightly closures must continue “so that we can clean and disinfect the system in a way that is safe and effect and efficient.”

“It actually is more difficult [to clean] when people are in the subway car,” Feinberg said.

“We have had experiences where folks have been woken up or disturbed and have been very tough on our cleaners.”