2 APRIL 2021 A team of scientists is calling for greater research into how sunlight inactivates SARS-CoV-2 after realizing there's a glaring discrepancy between the most recent theory and experimental results.
UC Santa Barbara mechanical engineer Paolo Luzzatto-Fegiz and colleagues noticed the virus was inactivated as much as eight times faster in experiments than the most recent theoretical model predicted. "The theory assumes that inactivation works by having UVB hit the RNA of the virus, damaging it," explained Luzzatto-Fegiz. But the discrepancy suggests there's something more going on than that, and figuring out what this is may be helpful for managing the virus.