A University of Windsor chemist is studying ways to make it easier to kill the coronavirus on high touch surface areas.
Dr. John Trant is developing a spray that could be sprayed once daily onto things such as gas pumps, elevator buttons or key pads.
The spray would be designed to prevent the virus from sticking onto the surface and infecting the next user.
Dr. Trant says there are certain areas that people can't avoid touching.
"The idea came to me because I was pumping gas and of course, I was touching the gas pump and the guy before me had touched the gas pump and no matter how hard working the person is in the kiosk, they are not going to be going out and bleach the gas pump between every single person using it," he says.
Trant says the spray would only need to be applied once a day.
"We need something that we can put on these high touch surfaces, things like elevator buttons, door handles, gas pumps, key pads so if I touch it and I'm infected and I have viral particles on my hands, as I touch it the viral particles are destroyed so the next person who touches it, is safe," he says.
Trant says right now there are few options.
"Bleach is great, bleach is the best tool we have, soap and water is the best tool we have for cleaning our hands, everything else is a pale imitation of those two. But it not always possible to have soap and water and it is not always possible to bleach a surface between each user, we are looking to compliment that with other alternative solutions," he adds.
Dr. Trant hopes to have the research to a regulatory body in four to five months.
He's also working on a resin that would coat the high touch surface area at the manufacturing process.
Dr. Trant is able to conduct the research with a $50,000 grant from the federal government through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.