Effective Heat Inactivation of SARS-CoV-2

This article has been Reviewed by the following groups

Read the full article See related articles

Abstract

The outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2 or 2019-nCoV) has quickly turned into a global pandemic. Infectious viruses had been isolated from oro- or naso-pharyngeal swabs, sputum and possibly stool samples of infected individuals. Handling these clinical specimens therefore poses a biosafety risk to both healthcare professionals and laboratory workers. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the stability of SARS-CoV-2 under different heat conditions and report that the virus is stable at 37 C for at least 24 hours. Heating at 56 C for 30 minutes, however, effectively inactivated the virus while preserved the stability of viral RNA in both human sera and sputum samples. These findings provide critical information regarding the biology of the virus as well as a practical way to inactivate infectious virus that is potentially found in clinical specimens.

Article activity feed

  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.29.20085498: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.