Abstract
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic urges for cheap, reliable and rapid technologies for disinfection and decontamination. We here evaluated the efficiency of UV-C irradiation to inactivate surface dried SARS-CoV-2. Drying for two hours did not have a major impact on the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2, indicating that exhaled virus in droplets or aerosols stays infectious on surfaces at least for a certain amount of time. Strikingly, short exposure of high titer surface dried virus (3*10^6 IU/ml) with UV-C light (16 mJ/cm2) resulted in a total reduction of SARS-CoV-2 infectivity. Together, our results demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 is rapidly inactivated by relatively low doses of UV-C irradiation. Hence, UV-C treatment is an effective non-chemical possibility to decontaminate surfaces from high-titer infectious SARS-CoV-2.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
We recalculated the UV-C dose of the moving regime and updated the manuscript accordingly.
