Far-UVC Light Safely Kills Airborne Coronaviruses

A new study has revealed that coronavirus can be killed by far UVC light. More than 99.9% of seasonal coronaviruses present in airborne droplets were killed when exposed to a particular wavelength of ultraviolet light that is safe to use around humans, a new study at Columbia University Irving Medical Center has found!!

The study, published by the prestigious journal Nature suggests that given the rapid spread, including through asymptomatic carriers, it is of clear importance to explore practical mitigation technologies that can inactivate the airborne virus in public locations and thus limit airborne transmission.

The researchers used a standard approach to measure viral inactivation, assaying coronavirus infectivity in human host cells, in this case after exposure in aerosols to different doses of far-UVC light.

The authors say the severity of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic warrants the rapid development and deployment of effective countermeasures to reduce indoor person-to-person transmission. They have developed a promising approach using single-wavelength far-UVC light at 222 nm generated by filtered excimer lamps, which inactivates airborne viruses without inducing biological damage in exposed human cells and tissue.

Clearly, there is a need to develop the ideas which have come from this research through further studies as a matter of urgency. Given the lack of colatoral damage to host cells from this potential treatment, this may turn out to be an important break in the impasse of focusing solely on vaccines and drugs with all their inherent risks and problems. Clear and viable options exist now or could be developed if funding was appropriately chanelled into natural approaches, including the significant contribution herbal medicine could make, if only the official line was not so market-orientated and media saturation was less impartial.

Full details of the study are available here:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-67211-2