Cold atmospheric plasma for SARS-CoV-2 inactivation

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text woodmart_inline=”no” text_larger=”no”]November 2020 Zhitong Chen 1 , Gustavo Garcia Jr 2 , Vaithilingaraja Arumugaswami, Richard E Wirz 1 Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infectious virions are viable on various surfaces (e.g., plastic, metals, and cardboard) for several hours. This presents a transmission cycle for human infection that can be broken by developing new inactivation approaches. We employed an efficient cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) with argon feed gas to inactivate SARS-CoV-2 on various surfaces including plastic, metal, cardboard, basketball composite leather, football leather, and baseball leather. These results demonstrate the great potential of CAP as a safe and effective means to prevent virus transmission and infections for a wide range of surfaces that experience frequent human contact. Since this is the first-ever demonstration of cold plasma inactivation of SARS-CoV-2, it is a significant milestone in the prevention and treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and presents a new opportunity for the scientific, engineering, and medical communities.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]