Senator Larry Mavhima has this Friday launched a product that can kill coronavirus. This was reported by ZBC News who posted on Twitter saying:
Midlands Provincial Affairs Minister Senator Larry Mavhima launched the product which meets WHO standards of a minimum of 60 % alcohol enough to kill the coronavirus as it contains 70% alcohol content.
It has to be noted that the product does not cure but kills coronavirus that is on objects. Recent studies show that the virus can remain viable and infectious in droplets in the air for hours and on surfaces up to days.
Below are some of the recent findings which can help users of the newly launched product.
- When the virus is carried by the droplets released when someone coughs or sneezes, it able to still infect people in aerosols for at least three hours.
- On plastic and stainless steel, viable virus (able to infect people) could be detected after three days.
- On cardboard, the virus was not viable after 24 hours.
- On copper, it took 4 hours for the virus to become inactivated.
- In terms of half-life, the research team found that it takes about 66 minutes for half the virus particles to lose function if they are in an aerosol droplet.
- On stainless steel, it takes 5 hours 38 minutes for half of the virus particles to become inactive.
- On plastic, the half-life is 6 hours 49 minutes, researchers found.
- On cardboard, the half-life was about three and a half hours, but the researchers said there was a lot of variability in those results “so we advise caution” interpreting that number.
- The shortest survival time was on copper, where half the virus became inactivated within 46 minutes.
