Would UV lights kill the virus, if, for example, it were to be sneezed out from a patient. Assuming the patient room was awash in UV light, would that kill the virus if it found airborne/aerosol method of transport from an infected patient?
According to several sources, it may take up to an hour for the virus to be invalidated by UV light. That makes it not really practical for the patient or the HCP involved.
Not only that, but I suspect at the energies required, the amount of UV radiation would be quite harmful to the patient as well.
"Inactivation of virus stocks.Virus stocks were inactivated by exposure to UV light for 1 h. Proper inactivation was controlled by the incubation of Vero E6 cells with the inactivated virus particles and subsequent screening for the presence of viral proteins (immunofluorescence) and viral RNA (reverse transcription [RT]-PCR targeting virus-specific transcripts). The UV-inactivated stocks were used at the same dilutions as the noninactivated stocks."
http://jvi.asm.org/content/75/22/11025.full http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00705-010-0847-1