How simple plastic surfaces can be recruited to the fight against contact transmission of SARS-CoV-2

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To date, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) appears to spread easily in droplets in the air and via surfaces. Early work indicates that viruses appear to remain infectious longer on some surfaces compared to others. However, it is currently unclear what role the surface chemistry plays in the survival, infectivity and denaturation process of the virus outside a host on surfaces.Simple polymers, on which the surface chemistry reduces the transfer of infectious viruses in the ambient environment, would have the advantage over the currently available active-loaded and protein-coated products which deplete and degrade over time. The aims of this project are to identify the effect on the virus adsorption, infectivity and denaturation behaviours of; 1) a range of commercially available gloves and other PPE surfaces, e.g. visors, to enable a recommendation of which existing polymers should be employed for optimal PPE, and 2) screen novel polymer surfaces using high throughput methodologies for selection of virucidal performance recently developed at the University of Nottingham, to develop new polymers for PPE and contact transmission control.Objectives:1. Quantify viral binding and inactivation under ambient conditions to existing PPE plastics.2. Quantify the magnitude and specificity of SARS-CoV-2 virus-like particle (VLP) or SARS2 spike-containing pseudovirus (PV) binding to polymers using libraries presented on micro arrays.3. Quantify the adsorption, infectivity and denaturation of SARS-CoV-2 viruses bound to the scaled up 'top 10' polymers of interest on slide or multiwell-plate and other PPE materials (using new facility in Nottingham).4. Develop anti-SARS-CoV-2 polymers for PPE and more widely for infection protection control surfaces.