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Does sunlight Kill Rotavirus? Maybe freezing? Norwalk or similar. Its a practical question for bedding.

David
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Btuce Johnson
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    So you have bedding contaminated with rotavirus? These can live more than a week in a variety of conditions. Freezing will not do the job and sunlight won't either. I'd recommend a high temperature wash/dry cycle with bleach. Most other disinfection methods will bleach your fabrics anyways. What you should really do if they're extremely soiled is discard them, however. – CKM May 03 '17 at 03:09

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According to this study, both a high temperature wash (57C) and full spectrum sunlight will kill rotavirus.

It would appear that a washer with a sanitation cycle (newer models often have a cycle that hits or exceeds 165F) would be your best bet for treating bedding.

See Figure 2.enter image description here

akaDrHouse
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  • Oof, that figure though... I presume the y-axis should be labeled "log activation"? And the units aren't FFU/mL they are plotting a dimensionless ratio of FFU(t)/FFU(0). Importantly, though, if log10(FFU(t)/FFU(0)) = -2, that's only a 99% reduction which may not be enough for OP. Still, I have trouble trusting a source that can't label their axes properly. – Bryan Krause May 09 '17 at 20:41
  • I think it is correctly labeled. If you measure at time(t) and find 5 units still alive, and at beginning of experiment (t0) you had 100 units alive. Then log10(5/100) = log10(.05) = -1.3. A Y axis value of -2 would mean that 99% of the initial population of rotavirus was inactivated. – akaDrHouse May 09 '17 at 21:43
  • Point taken about 99% not being enough though. – akaDrHouse May 09 '17 at 21:44
  • The y-axis numbers are correct, the word "inactivation" is not. If "inactivation" is plotted it should be something more like [FFU(0) - FFU(t)]/FFU(0), where inactivation=0 means the FFU is unchanged from baseline. 5 units alive should be greater inactivation than 10 units alive but on the chart it is less. Clearly what they are actually plotting is activity. – Bryan Krause May 09 '17 at 21:49
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    My concern is OP's issue has to do with bedding, whereas the paper here is testing inactivation in liquid broth or what have you. I don't think the two media are comparable. – CKM May 10 '17 at 00:18
  • @CMosychuk Also a good point: presumably in a broth there is fairly direct access to the light, whereas with bedding there may be many nooks and crannies not exposed to direct light and therefore the broth test is probably a significant overestimation of the susceptibility to sunlight. – Bryan Krause May 10 '17 at 18:23
  • OP asked if sunlight can kill the virus. Apparently full spectrum light can. It is certainly valid to question the ability of sunlight to access the nooks and crannies of bedding. Personally, I found the info about heat particularly useful, as many new washing machines have a heated water sterilization setting that exceeds 57C. The slope of the line for heat indicates it likely be a 99.9 percent reduction in virus particles after 5-10 minutes of this temp (-log10 = 3). – akaDrHouse May 10 '17 at 19:06