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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Oof, this is terrible news, might have to treat all of these materials as hazardous and incinerate it all instead of reusing.

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This is bad news. But it doesn't tell us that washing with detergent is unable to remove the pathogen from scrubs. Nor does it tell us that that washing at high temperatures no longer kills it.

Hot wash (boiling water) with detergent, followed by hot air tumble drying also, will pretty much sterilize clothing. Of course that doesn't prevent contamination at some point later.

Or they might need to be irradiated before reused.

I had not thought of that! Good call out, definitely an opportunity for gamma radiation treatment as part of the cleaning cycle after mechanical washing.

I'd maybe start with UV-C, but then again, doesn't it break down/embrittle some plastics?

Wouldn’t get inside the clothing (gowns, scrubs, etc). The benefit of gamma is you can throw it all in the target area and ensure somewhat uniform exposure (similar to food/ag irradiation).

Regardless, the outcome is going to be shorter lifetime of these medical resources due to decay rate from the more aggressive treatment cycle.

I wonder if a pressure chamber would be feasible. Might be cheaper to incinerate, honestly. Or irradiate

> I wonder if a pressure chamber would be feasible.

Ah yes, the Hacker News tendency to gradually collectively re-invent existing technologies every now and then:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclave

(No shade. Good thing, trying to think of solutions. It's just kinda funny to see.)

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