When you are walking into a hospital, you want to know that pillow you are putting your head onto is clean," said study lead author Taylor Wright, a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada. coli bacteria remaining after 30 minutes, which fell to three per cent when the treated cloth was exposed to green light for the same amount of time.Similarly, 95 per cent of viable MRSA bacteria remained, dropping to 35 per cent under green light.They then used an ultraviolet (UV) light to turn this solution to a solid, fixing the coating to the fabric.Whereas other such technologies can involve chemical waste, high energy use, or expensive equipment, the new method is relatively easy and affordable, they said.
The team found they needed an 18 square centimeter piece of fabric to kill microbes with material containing seven per cent weight of the polyester stretch active ingredient."In other words, only one tenth of the amount of virus signal was detected on cells infected with the UV-fabric and light treated virus," said study co-author Francois Jean, a professor at UBC.The researchers noted that hospital fabric and activewear companies are already interested in the technology, and the university has applied for a patent in the US."Biomanufacturing face masks based on this new UBC technology would represent an important addition to our arsenal in the fight against COVID-19, in particular for highly transmissible SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern such as Omicron," said Jean.Researchers soaked fabric in a solution of a bacteria-killing polymer which contains a molecule that releases sterilising forms of oxygen when light shines on it..They found the passive properties were not effective against the virus, but when treated fabric was exposed to green light for two hours, there was up to 90 per cent decrease in the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2.The researchers also looked into whether the coating reduced the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 by bathing treated fabric in a solution of the virus particles and then adding that solution to living cells to see if they could infect them. coli and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), both major sources of hospital-acquired infections.However, increasing this to 23 per cent weight improved the effectiveness of the fabric at four times less material.
