A new research study announced at the White House in Washington, claims the new coronavirus is quickly destroyed by sunlight, but this still awaits external evaluation.
William Bryan, science and technology advisor to the Department of Homeland Security secretary, told reporters at the White House that government scientists had found ultraviolet rays that had a potent impact on the pathogen, offering hope its spread might ease over the summer.
“Our most striking observation to date is the powerful effect that solar light appears to have on killing the virus, both surfaces and in the air,” he said.
“We’ve seen a similar effect with both temperature and humidity as well, where increasing the temperature and humidity or both is generally less favorable to the virus.”
But the paper itself has not yet been released for review, making it difficult for independent experts to comment on how robust its methodology was.
Sterilizing effect
It has long been known that ultraviolet light has a sterilizing effect because the radiation damages the virus’ genetic material and their ability to replicate.
A key question, however, will be what the intensity and wavelength of the UV light used in the experiment was and whether this accurately mimics natural light conditions in summer.
“It would be good to know how the test was done, and how the results were measured,” Benjamin Neuman, chair of biological sciences at Texas A&M University-Texarkana, told AFP.
“Not that it would be done badly, just that there are several different ways to count viruses, depending on what aspect you are interested in studying.”
Failed experiment
Meanwhile, the experimental coronavirus treatment remdesivir has failed in its first randomized clinical trial, inadvertently released results showed Thursday, dampening expectations for the closely watched drug.
A draft summary went online briefly on the website of the World Health Organization and was first reported by the Financial Times and Stat, which posted a screenshot.
But Gilead Sciences, the company behind the medicine, disputed how the now-deleted post had characterized the findings, saying the data showed a “potential benefit.”
The summary said the Chinese trial involved 237 patients, with 158 on the drug and 79 in a control group. Remdesivir was stopped early in 18 patients because of side effects.
The authors said remdesivir was “not associated with a difference in time to clinical improvement” compared to the control.
After a month, 13.9 percent of the patients on remdesivir had died compared to 12.8 percent of those in the control group. The difference is not statistically significant.
Nicotine a protector?
Nicotine could protect people from contracting the coronavirus, according to new research in France, where further trials are planned to test whether the substance could be used to prevent or treat the deadly illness.
The findings come after researchers at a top Paris hospital examined 343 coronavirus patients along with 139 people infected with the illness with milder symptoms.
They found that a low number of them smoked, compared to smoking rates of around 35 percent in France’s general population.
“Among these patients, only five percent were smokers,” said Zahir Amoura, the study’s co-author and a professor of internal medicine.
The research echoed similar findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine last month that suggested that 12.6 percent of 1,000 people infected in China were smokers. That was a much lower figure than the number of regular smokers in China’s general population, about 26 percent, according to the World Health Organization.