White House COVID-19 Task Force: Sunlight may kill the virus

U.S. — On Thursday, President Trump and the White House Task Force provided an update on their COVID-19 response.

Bill Bryan with the Department of Homeland Security said during Thursday’s update that when studying the biology of the virus they’ve found some striking observations.

The most striking observation, according to Bryan, is that solar light kills the virus on surfaces and in the air.

He said that the virus is dying more rapidly with heat and humidity, and is dying the quickest under direct sunlight.

Bryan added that a good best practice is to increased temperature and humidity on surfaces to suppress the virus.

He also suggested that people should do outside activities because the sunlight impedes the virus transmission.

He also mentioned that commonly available disinfectants, such as bleach and alcohol, also work to kill the COVID-19 virus.

Dr. Rathore is the Chief of Infectious Diseases and an Epidemiologist at Baptist Health in Jacksonville. He said this type of study has been performed before and takes years. None of it has been proven at this time.

“Sunlight in and of itself, to the best of my knowledge, is not being studied to show that it can kill the different viruses and the bacteria. It probably can kill some of them but here we’re talking about a very specific virus,” Dr. Mobeen Rathore said.

“We need to be very sure that we don’t fall into the false impression that if you’re out in the sunlight, you would be able to get rid of the coronavirus,” Dr. Rathore said.

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