Abstract
The novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has spread into a pandemic since its emergence in Wuhan, China in December of 2019. This has been facilitated by its high transmissibility within the human population and its ability to remain viable on inanimate surfaces for an extended period. To address the latter, we examined the effect of simulated sunlight on the viability of SARS-CoV-2 spiked into tissue culture medium or mucus. The study revealed that inactivation took 37 minutes in medium and 107 minutes in mucus. These times-to-inactivation were unexpected since they are longer than have been observed in other studies. From this work, we demonstrate that sunlight represents an effective decontamination method but the speed of decontamination is variable based on the underlying matrix. This information has an important impact on the development of infection prevention and control protocols to reduce the spread of this deadly pathogen.
Highlights
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been responsible for a global pandemic of its associated disease, COVID-19, since its emergence in Wuhan, China in December of 2019 [1,2,3,4,5]
Vero E6 (ATCC1 CRL-1586TM) cells were grown in 150 cm2 tissue-cultured treated flasks to 80–90% confluence in Dulbeco’s Minimum Essential Medium (DMEM) supplemented with 5% bovine calf serum (BCS)
Within a biosafety level (BSL)-3 laboratory, the medium was removed and the cells were washed with DMEM containing 0.1% bovine serum albumin (BSA)
Summary
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been responsible for a global pandemic of its associated disease, COVID-19, since its emergence in Wuhan, China in December of 2019 [1,2,3,4,5]. SARS-CoV-2, in a variety of settings [13,14,15,16,17,18,19], radiation in the UVA and UVB spectral ranges are known to cause significant damage to nucleic acids [20]. These observations suggest that sunlight penetrating the atmosphere may act as an antimicrobial agent. We examine the ability of sunlight to deactivate SARS-CoV-2 in simulated mucus at a level of UVB irradiance not previously tested. These data will add to the growing field of knowledge concerning the ability of sunlight to act as a natural sterilizing medium and reduce the viability of SARS-CoV-2
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