Sunlight, heat and humidity dramatically shorten the half-life of Coronavirus

Boston Herald:
Sunlight, heat and humidity may have a “powerful” impact on killing the coronavirus within one or two minutes, a Department of Homeland Security official said on Thursday.

Increasing temperatures, humidity and sunlight are detrimental to coronavirus saliva droplets on surfaces and in the air, Homeland Security official William Bryan reported at a White House press conference.

President Trump said of the emerging results, “The whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute, that’s pretty powerful.”

Trump said, “We want ideas to get rid of this thing, and if heat is good and if sunlight is good, that’s a great thing as far as I’m concerned.”

“Our most striking observation to date is the powerful effect that solar light appears to have on killing the virus, both on surfaces and in the air,” Bryan said. “We have 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.”

The half-life of the virus in the summer sun would be about two minutes on surfaces, and 1.5 minutes in the air, he said.

The coronavirus survives better inside and in dry environments, said Bryan who noted they started testing the virus in February.
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Perhaps they should start doing some testing at nudist resorts in Florida and Texas to see if there is a smaller chance of spreading the virus.  It is somewhat ironic that in the Chech Republic they made nudest wear face masks.  Bryan also indicated that cleaning a surface with alcohol was also an effective way to destroy the virus.

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