Does partitioning help in containing a virus to a particular partition?

I would like to know if partitioning of a hard disk limits the spread of a virus to that particular partition only?

Eg- Suppose the hard disk is partitioned into 3 parts, namely C(OS),D,E. and a virus infects partition C, then will partitions D and E be also infected? (Assuming that the antivirus software cannot remove the virus and you will have to format the partition C)