The COVID-19 pandemic has forced all of us to change our ways, both personally and professionally, to keep ourselves safe and uninfected. Disinfection and sanitization of surfaces and larger areas has become crucial for not just disease prevention but also for keeping the machinery of our world running, especially for those who don’t have the luxury to work at home and self-quarantine.
Luckily, the world’s smartest minds have risen to the challenge. Disinfecting and sanitizing larger areas has become increasingly easier and more efficient thanks to new technologies and innovative approaches, and companies large and small have adopted these techniques to make it safer to do business. Here are some of the most noteworthy ways companies have begun to combat the coronavirus using safe and innovative methods.
Drones
The fewer humans you put in harm’s way while cleaning and disinfecting, the better. Yet you often still need a human calling the shots, and that’s where the idea of an unmanned drone comes in. With both the professional and personal quadcopter drone market booming and being used for everything from aerial photography to package delivery, it was only a matter of time before enterprising companies designed drones that could deliver disinfectant payloads over large areas without necessitating the risks associated with people being present.
Robots
What’s even better than a remotely-operated drone that can limit human exposure and still disinfect large spaces? Autonomous robots that do the same for indoor spaces are now being deployed to help clean and disinfect places where drone use isn’t feasible. These overgrown robot vacuums don’t just spray disinfectant, either; they create a visual record of where they’ve been and what spots they might have missed to make it possible for their human operators to double-check and ensure that there are no nooks and crannies that haven’t been accounted for.
Electrostatic Sprayers
Handheld disinfectant sprayers are nothing new, but the way they’ve been adapted to provide the highest level of coverage and effectiveness certainly is The Protexus electrostatic sprayer, designed for use in veterinary clinics, is one example of this technology. It electrostatically charges disinfectant droplets as they are sprayed, which produces charged droplets with attractive forces up to 15 times stronger than gravity to ensure consistent application across all surfaces.
UVc Light
There’s an old saying: sunlight is the best disinfectant. It turns out that this is actually true in many situations, especially when it comes to certain wavelengths of ultraviolet light, which can penetrate the cell walls of mircoscopic organisms like viruses and destroy its nucleic acids. This either makes it impossible to reproduce or even kills it outright by disrupting its DNA structure. UVc light sterilization has been used in dental offices to great effect already, and rolling out more large-scale options for UVc sterilization is certainly one way to provide additional disinfectant options to the table when needed.
Just the Tip of the Iceberg
As the coronavirus pandemic rolls on, it’s only natural that more advanced and effective ways of keeping large spaces clean and disinfected will continue to emerge. Innovations such as drones, robotics, electrostatics, and ultraviolet light sterilization are likely to spread far and wide, both by themselves and together, providing safer and more infection-free spaces in the future for us all.