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The COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus has had an enormous, as yet barely understood, impact on health and economic outlook at the global level. The identification of effective microbicide approaches is of paramount importance in order to limit further viral spread, as the virus can be transmitted via aerosol and can survive for hours outside the body. In this context, non-contact disinfection technologies are highly desirable, and UV radiation, in particular UV-C (200 – 280 nm), is one of the most reliable and widely accepted approach. The interaction of UV-C radiations with viruses has been extensively studied, and the most common mechanism consists in direct absorption of the UV-C photon by the nucleic acid basis and/or capsid proteins leading to the generation of photoproducts that inactivate the virus. Some models have been proposed to correlate the nucleic acid structure with the required dose to inactivate the virus, but we are far from a reliable model. This is also due to the fact that UV-C measurements were conducted using different viruses and diverse experimental conditions. This led to an extremely wide range of values for the same virus and, e.g. in the case of SARS-COV-1 values reported in the literature range from a few mJ/cm2 to hundreds mJ/cm2.
