REPORTS CLAIM that ultraviolet (UV) light and Vitamin C can be used as medical treatments for COVID-19. The fact is experts have not found enough scientific evidence that the two can help people fight off the novel coronavirus.
“We would like to inform the public that there are no protocols to advise or permit the safe use of UV light directly on the human body at the wavelengths and exposures proven to efficiently kill viruses such as SARS-CoV-2,” said a joint statement by industry groups the International Ultraviolet Association and RadTech North America.
Scientists believe that UV light is quite dangerous if used directly on human bodies. “UV radiation can cause skin irritation and damage your eyes,” said the World Health Organization.
“It is not safe to use UV sanitizers on your body,” warned the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
“For years, we've used UV on air and surfaces and on hospital rooms, with no humans in the room,” Jim Malley, a UV light expert and professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of New Hampshire, told USA Today. “We protect ourselves in the laboratory with face shields and gloves to keep the UV away from our eyes and our skin.”
Besides, experts remained skeptical about the UV blood irradiation (UBI), which involves withdrawing a measure of blood and exposes it to UV light.
The UBI is “an invasive treatment where lots of things might go badly wrong,” wrote Edzard Ernest, professor emeritus at the University of Exeter, in April, adding that robust clinical trials on the UBI “are missing completely.”
As for Vitamin C, many scientists have suggested there is less evidence that it grants immunity against the virus, or alleviates symptoms for COVID-19 patients given a high dose.
William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the U.S. state of Tennessee, told The New York Times no evidence suggests that vitamin C supplements can help prevent Covid-19.
“If there's going to be an advantage, it's going to be very modest,” he said.
Also, no results are yet available for the clinical trial launched on February 11 by researchers from Zhongnan Hospital of China's Wuhan University to test the efficacy and safety of vitamin C infusions for the treatment of COVID-19 patients.
According to media reports in April, Charles Mok, a 56-year-old Michigan doctor who claimed in multiple videos that Vitamin C infusions supposedly reduce the severity of symptoms and the duration of illness, as well as boost the immunity of those who have a high risk for contracting Covid-19, has been charged with health care fraud and conspiracy to commit health care fraud.
But according to Health Europa, two UV infection control methods of killing bacteria currently exist, which use chemicals or ultraviolet radiation exposure as a form of disinfectant, using a 200 to 300 nanometre range. However, in order to kill the Covid-19 virus very high levels of ultraviolet light is required, which can be very costly.
Now, researchers from Penn State and the University of Minnesota have used the recent discovery of a class of transparent conductors that could allow for high levels of UV light that would kill the virus. If scaled up successfully, the researchers believe that UV light could be used to disinfect public areas such as public transport, aeroplanes, and sports arenas.
The researchers believe that a handheld UV light device that emits high-intensity rays could help to kill the novel virus.
Roman Engel-Herbert, Penn State associate professor of materials science, physics and chemistry, said: “You have to ensure a sufficient UV light dose to kill all the viruses. This means you need a high-performance UV LED emitting a high intensity of UV light, which is currently limited by the transparent electrode material being used.”
To solve the problem the scientists wanted to develop high performance, portable diodes that can have a current applied to them for light transmission – however, they needed to be transparent to UV light. Finding the correct material was vital, and the scientists believed a recently discovered class of transparent conductors could offer the solution.
The material – strontium niobite – was provided by Japanese collaborators, which was then tested by the Minnesota and Penn State teams as transparent UV conductors.
Joseph Roth, doctoral candidate in Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State, commented: “There is currently no good solution for a UV-transparent electrode. Right now, the current material solution commonly employed for visible light application is used despite it being too absorbing in the UV range. There is simply no good material choice for a UV-transparent conductor material that has been identified.
“We immediately tried to grow these films using the standard film-growth technique widely adopted in industry, called sputtering. We were successful.”
“While our first motivation in developing UV transparent conductors was to build an economic solution for water disinfection, we now realise that this breakthrough discovery potentially offers a solution to deactivate Covid-19 in aerosols that might be distributed in HVAC (Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning ) systems of buildings.” (Xinhua and Health Europa)
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“We would like to inform the public that there are no protocols to advise or permit the safe use of UV light directly on the human body at the wavelengths and exposures proven to efficiently kill viruses such as SARS-CoV-2,” said a joint statement by industry groups the International Ultraviolet Association and RadTech North America.
Scientists believe that UV light is quite dangerous if used directly on human bodies. “UV radiation can cause skin irritation and damage your eyes,” said the World Health Organization.
“It is not safe to use UV sanitizers on your body,” warned the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
“For years, we've used UV on air and surfaces and on hospital rooms, with no humans in the room,” Jim Malley, a UV light expert and professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of New Hampshire, told USA Today. “We protect ourselves in the laboratory with face shields and gloves to keep the UV away from our eyes and our skin.”
Besides, experts remained skeptical about the UV blood irradiation (UBI), which involves withdrawing a measure of blood and exposes it to UV light.
The UBI is “an invasive treatment where lots of things might go badly wrong,” wrote Edzard Ernest, professor emeritus at the University of Exeter, in April, adding that robust clinical trials on the UBI “are missing completely.”
As for Vitamin C, many scientists have suggested there is less evidence that it grants immunity against the virus, or alleviates symptoms for COVID-19 patients given a high dose.
William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the U.S. state of Tennessee, told The New York Times no evidence suggests that vitamin C supplements can help prevent Covid-19.
“If there's going to be an advantage, it's going to be very modest,” he said.
Also, no results are yet available for the clinical trial launched on February 11 by researchers from Zhongnan Hospital of China's Wuhan University to test the efficacy and safety of vitamin C infusions for the treatment of COVID-19 patients.
According to media reports in April, Charles Mok, a 56-year-old Michigan doctor who claimed in multiple videos that Vitamin C infusions supposedly reduce the severity of symptoms and the duration of illness, as well as boost the immunity of those who have a high risk for contracting Covid-19, has been charged with health care fraud and conspiracy to commit health care fraud.
But according to Health Europa, two UV infection control methods of killing bacteria currently exist, which use chemicals or ultraviolet radiation exposure as a form of disinfectant, using a 200 to 300 nanometre range. However, in order to kill the Covid-19 virus very high levels of ultraviolet light is required, which can be very costly.
Now, researchers from Penn State and the University of Minnesota have used the recent discovery of a class of transparent conductors that could allow for high levels of UV light that would kill the virus. If scaled up successfully, the researchers believe that UV light could be used to disinfect public areas such as public transport, aeroplanes, and sports arenas.
Current UV devices fall short
The researchers believe that a handheld UV light device that emits high-intensity rays could help to kill the novel virus.
Roman Engel-Herbert, Penn State associate professor of materials science, physics and chemistry, said: “You have to ensure a sufficient UV light dose to kill all the viruses. This means you need a high-performance UV LED emitting a high intensity of UV light, which is currently limited by the transparent electrode material being used.”
To solve the problem the scientists wanted to develop high performance, portable diodes that can have a current applied to them for light transmission – however, they needed to be transparent to UV light. Finding the correct material was vital, and the scientists believed a recently discovered class of transparent conductors could offer the solution.
The material – strontium niobite – was provided by Japanese collaborators, which was then tested by the Minnesota and Penn State teams as transparent UV conductors.
Developing the conductors
Joseph Roth, doctoral candidate in Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State, commented: “There is currently no good solution for a UV-transparent electrode. Right now, the current material solution commonly employed for visible light application is used despite it being too absorbing in the UV range. There is simply no good material choice for a UV-transparent conductor material that has been identified.
“We immediately tried to grow these films using the standard film-growth technique widely adopted in industry, called sputtering. We were successful.”
“While our first motivation in developing UV transparent conductors was to build an economic solution for water disinfection, we now realise that this breakthrough discovery potentially offers a solution to deactivate Covid-19 in aerosols that might be distributed in HVAC (Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning ) systems of buildings.” (Xinhua and Health Europa)
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