INTERRUPTION OF ROTAVIRUS SPREAD THROUGH CHEMICAL DISINFECTION

INTRODUCTION: Rotaviruses, which are among the most important infectio us causes of acute diarrhea, frequently cause outbreaks in hospitals, daycare centers, schools, and nursing homes. These viruses can remain viable on inanimate surfaces for many days and infectious rotavirus pa rticles have been recovered from hands and a variety of surfaces and o bjects. Casual contact can lead to the transfer of these viruses from contaminated to clean surfaces. Therefore, animate and inanimate surfa ces may play a complementary role in the spread of these viruses. OBJE CTIVE: In this study, we compared the capacity of a disinfectant spray (0.1% o-phenylphenol and 79% ethanol), a domestic bleach (6% sodium h ypochlorite diluted to give 800 ppm free chlorine), a quaternary ammon ium (quat)-based product (7.05% quat diluted 1:128 in tap water), and a phenol-based product (14.7% phenol diluted 1:256 in tap water) to in terrupt the transfer of a human rotavirus (DS-1) from stainless steel disks to fingerpads of volunteers with a 10-second contact at a pressu re of 1 kg/cm2. DESIGN: Each disk received a 10 muL inoculum containin g 1.0 x 10(4) to 7.0 x 10(4) plaque-forming units (PFU) of the virus s uspended in 10% feces. The inoculum was dried for 1 hour and overlaid with 20 muL of either tap water or the test product. RESULTS: A 10-min ute exposure to tap water reduced the virus titer by 52.3% +/- 11.7%. The disinfectant spray was able to reduce virus infectivity by >99.99% after a contact of 3 to 10 minutes. The loss in virus infectivity aft er a 10-minute treatment with the quat was almost the same (54.7% +/- 17.8%) as seen with tap water. The activities of the bleach and the ph enolic were very similar with losses in PFU of 97.9% +/- 0.4% and 95% +/- 5.36%, respectively. No detectable virus was transferred to finger pads from disks treated with disinfectant spray, the bleach, and the p henolic. Contact of the fingerpads with tap water- or quat-treated dis ks resulted in the transfer of 5.6% +/- 1.1% and 7.6% +/- 2.5% of the remaining infectious virus, respectively. CONCLUSION: These findings e mphasize the care needed in the selection of environmental surface dis infectants in preventing the spread of rotaviral infections (Infect Co ntrol Hosp Edimemiol 1994;15:751-756).