Heat efficiently inactivates coronaviruses inside vehicles
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Abstract
Heat is an established method to inactivate coronaviruses, and there is utility in using heat to reduce viral load on common touch points in vehicles exposed to a person shedding SARS-CoV-2. As SARS-CoV-2 is a Biosafety level (BSL)-3 pathogen, real world testing of heat as a sanitation method for public and private vehicles becomes a challenge, requiring a surrogate coronavirus that can be handled safely outside of a BSL-3 facility. In this study, we used Bovine Coronavirus (BCoV) as a surrogate for SARS-CoV-2 to test the efficacy of heat-based betacoronavirus inactivation. In vitro , a 30-minute exposure to 56°C completely inactivated BCoV in solution, and a 15-minute exposure reduced recovery of BCoV >1000-fold. When heated to 56°C for 15 minutes, the infectivity of BCoV spotted and dried on typical porous and non-porous automobile interior materials was reduced by 99 - 99.99%. When BCoV was spotted and dried on hard plastic (seat) material placed inside an out of service transit bus, 56°C heat for 30 minutes reduced BCoV infectivity 85 - 99.5%. Thus, 56°C is an accessible, rapid, and effective method to inactivate coronaviruses inside motor vehicles.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.09.08.459486: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IACUC: 14 All experiments were approved by the OSU Institutional Biosafety Committee (protocol # Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Cell Line Authentication not detected. Table 2: Resources
Experimental Models: Cell Lines Sentences Resources BCoV Propagation in tissue culture: BCoV-Mebus was propagated according to published protocols.13 Specifically, MDBK cells were seeded in T-150 tissue culture flasks, and once confluent, AMEM was removed, and cells were incubated for 3 hours in minimal essential medium (MEM, Life Technology, Catalog # 11095114) supplemented with 1x MEM non-essential amino acids (Gibco) and 1x … SciScore for 10.1101/2021.09.08.459486: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IACUC: 14 All experiments were approved by the OSU Institutional Biosafety Committee (protocol # Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Cell Line Authentication not detected. Table 2: Resources
Experimental Models: Cell Lines Sentences Resources BCoV Propagation in tissue culture: BCoV-Mebus was propagated according to published protocols.13 Specifically, MDBK cells were seeded in T-150 tissue culture flasks, and once confluent, AMEM was removed, and cells were incubated for 3 hours in minimal essential medium (MEM, Life Technology, Catalog # 11095114) supplemented with 1x MEM non-essential amino acids (Gibco) and 1x Antibiotic/Actinomycotic cocktail (Life Technology). MDBKsuggested: NoneSoftware and Algorithms Sentences Resources 17 Bovine Coronavirus half life in solution was calculated with GraphPad Prism version 9 using a one phase decay fit with a least squares regression. GraphPad Prismsuggested: (GraphPad Prism, RRID:SCR_002798)In order to avoid common errors that were identified in leading publications of the evolution of viruses,19,20 we used several techniques including: 1) successive outgroup expansion,21 2) genome annotation and multiple sequence alignment (using MAFFT v7.45322,23) of homologous gene partitions (for the polyprotein 1ab, spike, membrane, envelope, and nucleoprotein genes). MAFFTsuggested: (MAFFT, RRID:SCR_011811)Heuristic searches were conducted under the parsimony (using TNT v1.124) and maximum likelihood (using IQ-TREE v1.6.1225–28) optimality criteria. IQ-TREEsuggested: (IQ-TREE, RRID:SCR_017254)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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:While effective, there are several limitations to wiping down contaminated surfaces, including the following: 1) wiping down is laborious, especially when dealing with a fleet of vehicles, 2) it can be difficult to determine if the disinfectant contacts all surfaces in a complex space, and 3) solutions that contain bleach, hydrogen peroxide and ammonia can damage, discolor, and weaken materials.40 Similar limitations are seen with ultraviolet light, which can be effective with direct contact but suffers from shadowing and penetration issues when treating complex surface structures, crevices, and course fabrics.39,41,42 Alternatively, heat can penetrate materials, is not sensitive to shadowing, is easy and inexpensive to generate, and is well tolerated (to a point) by materials at levels that inactivate viruses.43 For instance, long term heat durability testing on vehicles is already performed at temperatures up to 80°C, as air temperatures inside of a closed vehicle can exceed 90°C on a hot day. Therefore, the polymer materials used in automotive are already stable at 56°C for long exposures. If for some instance they are not, well-known heat stabilizers called hindered amine light stabiliizers (HALS) can be added to extend heat performance by reducing free radical degradation mechanisms. Heat works to inactivate viruses by denaturing secondary structures of viral proteins44 and other biomolecules, rendering the virus particle non-infectious.45 Although there are many advanta...
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.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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