Susceptibility of SARS-CoV-2 to UV irradiation
Christiane Silke Heilingloh PhD 1, Ulrich Wilhelm Aufderhorst 1,2, Leonie Schipper BSc 1, Ulf Dittmer PhD 2,4, Oliver Witzke MD1, Dongliang Yang 3,4, Xin Zheng 3,4, Kathrin Sutter 2,4, Mirko Trilling PhD 2,4, Mira Alt MSc 1, Eike Steinmann 5,#, Adalbert Krawczyk PhD 1,2,4,*,#
ABSTRACT
The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 pandemic became a global health burden. We determined the susceptibility of SARS-CoV-2 to irradiation with ultraviolet light. The virus was highly susceptible to ultraviolet light. A viral stock with a high infectious titer of 5£ 106 TCID50/mL was completely inactivated by UVC irradiation after nine minutes of exposure. The UVC dose required for complete inactivation was 1,048 mJ/cm2. UVA exposure demonstrated only a weak effect on virus inactivation over 15 minutes. Hence, inactivation of SARS-CoV-2 by UVC irradiation constitutes a reliable method for disinfection purposes in health care facilities and for preparing SARS-CoV-2 material for research purpose.
© 2020 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc.
This is an open access article under the CC BY license. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
BACKGROUND
In December 2019, a novel coronavirus causing severe acute respiratory disease (SARS-CoV-2) was newly identified in the Hubei province, PR China, before becoming a global pandemic and causing tremendous health and socio-economic burdens.1 At the time of writing, more than 14.9 million cases and >618,000 deaths were reported worldwide (2020.07.23). The actual number of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 is most likely to be much higher since numerous infections, especially in younger people, are asymptomatic and frequently not captured by routine diagnostic methods.2 The symptoms of COVID-19 range from mild respiratory illness accompanied by cough, fever, myalgia, and fatigue, to severe, life-threatening pneumonia
