Dr. Wen-Lin Su, the director of ICU in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital (Left) and You-Chen Chao, Superintendent of Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital (Right) were talking about the research result.
 

What makes you start this research?

The COVID19 pandemic has impacted the capacity of hospital care. In addition to medical care, it is very important to prevent the spread of the virus in the hospital environment. The safety of my colleagues and environmental service workers is what I am concerned mostly about. We all know that ultraviolet disinfection has been widely used in hospital environment disinfection for years. However, the effective radiation dose for SARS-CoV-2 virus inactivation was still unknown. Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital has introduced UVC robots to clinical environments, especially in ICUs and Covid-19 isolation wards, since the pandemic raged the world. Therefore, it is crucial for us to understand the virus-contaminated areas in the environment and the clinically effective dosage of UVC and its application in the hospital setting.
 

Did you encounter any difficulties in the research process? How did you overcome them?

COVID-19 patients had been taken care of in the isolation wards and ICUs in our hospital. SARS-CoV-2 virus could be detected in its environment. But to be honest, our team was unable to identify the virus contamination areas in advance during the research process.
To overcome this issue, massive environmental sampling of fixed inspection areas was taken before and after UVC disinfection. We also utilized massive clinical manpower and high-throughput SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR rapid assay to obtain sufficient scientific data in the research.
 

Do you have any new research plans or directions for this field?

Yes. In the research, we found that UVC irradiation was effective for environmental cleaning in a clinical isolation ward for SARS-CoV-2 inactivation; however, silicone material items such as washbasins, with low temperature and slightly high relative humidity, required a higher dosage of UVC (252 mJ/cm2) to eliminate the viruses. In the next step, I would like to take further research on UVC application in the hospital bathrooms to identify the effective UVC dosage and clinical usage.