Do viruses respond to stimuli?

As you say Viruses are not alive and thus do not respond to anything directly. Once a virus has infected a cell and taken over its synthetic machinery to make more virus then at that point that cell will still respond to external stimuli albeit not as well as a "normal" uninfected cell. read more

In this way a single infecting bacteriophage can give rise to over 200-300 new offspring. The Lysogenic Cycle Other bacteriophages and many of the viruses do not automatically take over the host cell and begin making new "offspring". Instead, the invading nucleic acid somehow joints up with the host cell's DNA. read more

Viruses aren't able to respond to stimuli when outside of a host cell because outside host cells, viruses are dormant and sometimes even considered dead. Only when a virus starts reproducing in a cell can it weakly respond to stimuli. read more