Humidity and Deposition Solution Play a Critical Role in Virus Inactivation by Heat Treatment of N95 Respirators.

ABSTRACT: Supply shortages of N95 respirators during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have motivated institutions to develop feasible and effective N95 respirator reuse strategies. In particular, heat decontamination is a treatment method that scales well and can be implemented in settings with variable or limited resources. Prior studies using multiple inactivation methods, however, have often focused on a single virus under narrowly defined conditions, making it difficult to develop guiding principles for inactivating emerging or difficult-to-culture viruses. We systematically explored how temperature, humidity, and virus deposition solutions impact the inactivation of viruses deposited and dried on N95 respirator coupons. We exposed four virus surrogates across a range of structur

SUBMITTER: Rockey N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7580954 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature