Re: COVID19: Instrument cleaning protocols

Posted by Martin Wessendorf-2 on
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/COVID19-Instrument-cleaning-protocols-tp7590586p7590626.html

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Dear Dave--

With regard to viability, the half-life of the virus on stainless steel was
13 hours and on polypropylene was 16 hours.  So yes, decontamination at the
end of the day appears to be a good idea.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033217v1.full.pdf

Martin


On Mon, Mar 16, 2020 at 5:44 AM Dave Johnston <[hidden email]> wrote:

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>
> I'm with Andreas on this, there may be asymptomatic carriers out there
> (including unit staff), we just don't know, so have to assume the potential
> that any part of the scopes that get any human contact could be
> contaminated, and we consider the scopes and most other ancillary
> instruments to effectively be impossible to decontaminate without risk of
> damage, hence fresh gloves on entering the unit, that can be sprayed with
> 70% ethanol on regular basis, prevents you contaminating or being
> contaminated. We have confocals, TEMs, SEMs, slide scanners and analysis
> PCs to name a few and are based in a large teaching hospital site, so are
> also thinking about trying to encourage remote access to analysis PCs to
> minimise footfall and movement around the unit and wider site. That being
> said, have yet to convince the boss to adopt those policies.
>
> On the plus side, given reported viability on surfaces, a first thing in
> the morning clean and last thing at night clean may be unnecessary as if
> any virus at end of day lock up, will be inactive by morning? Between user
> cleaning may be best but we can have several dozen users in at any one time
> moving between instruments and don't want to give them access to spray
> bottles!!!!!
>
> Dave Johnston, Biomedical Imaging, Southampton.
>