From a New York Times news article about how the emergency medical technicians in Paterson, N.J., are coping with Covid-19:
As soon as the ambulance dropped off the patient, it rushed to the firehouse to be decontaminated. During the trip, an E.M.T. scrubbed the interior with disinfectant wipes. Once at the firehouse, the decontaminator team posted a warning sign on the rear of the vehicle: Dirty Bus.
Inside it, they hung an ultraviolet light.
Six minutes of ultraviolet light should clean the interior properly, but department protocol requires 20 minutes.
That ultraviolet light kills this virus is a promising topic for additional investigation. This BBC article on the topic distinguishes between UVA, UVB, and UVC radiation, and reports that other people have thought of this: "We had an enquiry from a private individual about our equipment, saying 'Well, why can't we just get one of your UV lights and put it up on the exit to the supermarket – people can stand under it for a few seconds before they go in.'"
It's not that simple, at least not yet, but UV light may be one of those things, like disposable grocery bags, that suddenly moves from the "bad for you" to "good for you" category amid the reaction to the coronavirus. We aren't quite at the point of repurposing all those skin-cancer-causing tanning beds from tanning salons and putting them at the staff and delivery entrances to nursing homes, but that is the sort of creative thinking that is going to be required in finding alternatives to keeping much of the U.S. population staying at home for the next 12 to 18 months or however long, maybe even longer, it can take for a vaccine to be developed and deployed.
