COVID-19: IIT Bhubaneswar develops multi-surface sanitizer using UVC lights

Bhubaneswar: Researchers at IIT Bhubaneswar have designed a safe  and multi-surface sanitizer using UVC lights to disinfect Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits, surgicals masks and electronic gadgets.

The chamber was developed to control surface contamination of bacteria and viruses including COVID-19.

“You can place an infected device into the chamber and once it gets exposed to ultra violet light, the device would be disinfected within 10-15 minutes. We have created two different chambers of different sizes for disinfection of masks and PPEs worn by the doctors and electronic gadgets like cellphone as they cannot be disinfected with soap water easily,” said  IIT Bhubaneswar Director Prof RV Raja Kumar.

However, there is a long way to go for the multi-surface sanitizer to be used in houses, as it need to be verified and certified by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), he said.

“This device has been developed based on the results available for SARS CoV-1 and the same device is expected to work for SARS CoV-2. We are going to test for SARS CoV-2 and then get a certificate from ICMR,” he added.

Kumar further said that the device was developed to control possible deaths of healthcare workers due to COVID-19.

“We made this model based on the research paper on SARS CoV-1 . We are also confident that this device would work for COVID-19,” said the institute’s Computer Science Assistant Professor Dr Devi Prasad Dogra.

It is pertinent to mention here that the number of positive cases in the state has reached 118, out of which 37 patients have recovered while one has died due to the deadly virus.

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