Your Health: Medicine’s next weapon against COVID

LANSING, Mich. (WILX) - Since the COVID pandemic started, we’ve learned so much about the virus.

Science tells us it can survive up to 72 hours on plastic and stainless steel surfaces, and 24 hours on cardboard. New findings suggest you can get COVID by just touching contaminated surfaces, so researchers are developing new ways to kill COVID before it becomes a threat.

“COVID created a lot of problems for humanity,” said Sudipta Seal. “But it also created a lot of opportunities.”

A team of UCF researchers stepped up to the challenge and created a nano-based disinfectant that can kill several viruses, including COVID.

“When you shrink a material down to nano dimensions, they have unique physical-chemical properties,” said Craig Neal. “The nanomaterial itself has this antiviral property.”

The particles are so small, it would take 100,000 of them to be as thick as a single strand of human hair.

A nano-coating uses everyday white light to generate UV light and destroy the virus. It was originally designed for protective equipment like gloves, facemasks and visors, but researchers believe the coating could work about everywhere.

The team at University of Central Florida is working to create a spray for another material. They’re testing it on multiple viruses and believe it can be tweaked to fight other pathogens.

More: Your Health

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