CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
NEWS USA TODAY z MONDAY, APRIL 6, 2020z 3A
The claim: Sunlight kills
coronavirus
An article on a holistic health blog
that has been circulating on Facebook
tells people to go outside to prevent
catching the new coronavirus because
sunlight kills it.
“In my opinion, keeping the beaches
closed and having people quarantined
inside their homes is a bad decision.
Getting more sunshine is a proactive
step we can all take at protecting our-
selves from the current coronavirus out-
break,” wrote David Friedman, the au-
thor of the blog post. “Instead of staying
quarantined inside your house, go out-
side on your back deck and soak up
some virus destroying sunshine!”
Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C.,referred to
the claim last month in a video posted
on his Twitter account.
In the video, Murphy, a physician
who worked in urology and renal trans-
plantation, stands in scrubs in front of a
large white board and shares tips to pre-
vent the spread of the coronavirus.
One of the items on the list is “Sun-
light (UV light) can kill the virus.”
USA TODAY reached out to Friedman
and Murphy for comment but did not re-
ceive a response from either.
The claim appeared in the Thai news-
paper Komchadluek in March.
The article listed UV light as one of
seven “things that COVID-19 is afraid
of.” AFP Fact Check reported the article
was shared in a Thai-language health
group on Facebook with more than
6,000 followers and posted on social
media multiple times, translated into
English and Spanish.What experts sayThe claim holds little truth. Experts
advised against using concentrated UV
light to prevent or treat the coronavirus
and do not recommend going in the sun-
light to kill the virus.
Only levels of UV light much higher
than what is in sunlight can kill viruses,
experts said, and the levels that kill vi-
ruses can cause irritation to human skin
and should be avoided.
Pokrath Hansasuta, assistant pro-
fessor of virology at ChulalongkornUni-
versity, explained what happens to AFP
Fact Check.
“Ultraviolet is able to kill COVID-19 if
it is exposed to the concentrated UV ray
in a certain amount of time and dis-
tance,” she said.
“However, that level of UV exposure
is harmful to human’s skin. Most likely,
it will be in the light bulb or lamp as the
natural UV from the sun is not strong
enough to kill it.The World Health Organization cre-
ated a graphic as part of a series of
myth busters about the coronavirus
that tells the public not to use UV light
to kill the virus.
“UV lamps should not be used to
sterilize hands or other areas of skin as
UV radiation can cause skin irritation,”
the graphic reads.
Neither sunlight nor UV light is list-
ed as a preventive measure on the
websites of the WHO or the U.S. Cen-
ters for Disease Control and
Prevention.
There is some evidence to suggest
the spread of the virus may slow down
as the weather gets warmer.
That may leadsome to incorrectly
suggest sunlight as a tip to stay
healthy.
Time magazine reported on new
researchthat has not yet been peer-re-
viewed that suggested the possibility
of a connection between heat and the
rate of the spread of the coronavirus,
but experts concluded the research is
still early and not definitive.
Nancy Messonnier,director of the
CDC’s National Center for Immuniza-
tion and Respiratory Diseases,said in
an NPR interview in Februarythat it’s
unclear how the coronavirus will react
to heat or sunlight.
“I think it’s premature to assume
that,” Messonnier said. “We haven’t
been through even a single year with
this pathogen.”FACT CHECK
Could sunlight kill virus?
Experts caution use of
UV light is dangerous
Molly Stellino
USA TODAY
The beach in Walton County, Fla., sits nearly empty following a mandated closure by the Walton County Commission.
DEVON RAVINE/NORTHWEST FLORIDA DAILY NEWS VIA USA TODAY NETWORK
A potential vaccine for COVID-
has been developed and tested suc-
cessfully in mice, researchers reported
Thursday.
“We’d like to get this into patients as
soon as possible,” said Andrea Gam-
botto,associate professor of surgery at
the University of Pittsburgh School of
Medicine and co-author of a paper an-
nouncing the vaccine in the journal
EBioMedicine.
As far as reaching clinical trials, “we
would like to think a month, give or
take. Maybe two months. We just
started the process,” said co-author
Louis Falo,a professor and chairman
of the Department of Dermatology at
the University of Pittsburgh.
Thursday’s announcement, more
than three months into a pandemic
that has killed 50,000 people and sick-
ened almost 1 million worldwide,pre-
sents an urgent challenge to govern-
ment regulators, who must weigh how
much to speed up the vaccine approval
process.
Vaccines often take years to receive
approval from the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration. Yet on March 16, the
first four healthy volunteers in Seattle
received a different potential CO-
VID-19 vaccine, made by a company
called Moderna and administered in a
small clinical trial at Kaiser Perma-
nente Washington Health Research In-
stitute.
Though the vaccine being tested in
Seattle uses a new, faster but untested
technology, the one developed in Pitts-
burgh employs the same technique
used in flu shots. The Pittsburgh vac-
cine uses lab-made viral protein to
build a person’s immunity to the virus.
Tests in mice found that the vaccine
spurred a wave of virus-fighting anti-
bodies within two weeks.“There are many, many vaccine
candidates in various stages of test-
ing,” said David O’Connor, professor at
the University of Wisconsin School of
Medicine and Public Health.
O’Connor said showing that a vac-
cine generates an immune response is
“an important first step in determining
which vaccines should move forward,
but is only the first of many steps along
the way to a useful vaccine. This paper
shows some of this ‘first step’ data.”
The potential COVID-19 vaccine fol-
lows up on research Gambotto and Fa-
lo did in December 2003 when they
were poised to proceed to clinical trials
with a vaccine for another coronavi-
rus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syn-
drome. At the time, the journal Nature
reported, “SARS vaccines speed to-
ward clinic.”
But the outbreak had already
waned. The World Health Organiza-
tion declared SARS contained in July
2003.
“SARS CoV-2 is teaching us that it is
important to react and (follow) all the
way through,” Gambotto said. “Yes, it
was a mistake not to test the vaccine
back then.”
The Pittsburgh researchers devel-
oped a vaccine to treat Arabian camels
for another coronavirus, Middle East
Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
Gambotto said they adapted tech-
niques they had developed for previ-
ous coronaviruses to create one specif-
ically designed for the virus that
causes COVID-19.
The Pittsburgh researchers call
their vaccine PittCoVacc.ResearchersdeveloppotentialvaccinePittsburgh team reportssuccessful tests in miceMark Johnson Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY NETWORKThat a vaccine generates animmune response is “animportant first step indetermining which vaccinesshould move forward, but isonly the first of manysteps.”
David O’Connor, the University of Wisconsin
School of Medicine and Public Healthchecks into the hands of Americans is
once again calling attention to aging
technology and other problems that
have shadowed the IRS for years – prob-
lems that will pose a serious challenge
for the agency as it scrambles to meet
the check delivery deadline.
The Treasury Department insists
that 50 million to 70 million Americans
will get their payments via direct depos-
it by April 15 and that most of those who
are eligible will get their checks within
three weeks. Americans whose bank ac-
count information is not in the govern-
ment’s system may have to wait longer,
Treasury says.
But a memo distributed by House
Democrats on Thursday warned that
some Americans may have to wait up to
20 weeks – or five months – before they
receive their checks.
“I don’t want to underestimate what
the IRS can do,” said Nina Olson, a for-
mer IRS taxpayer advocate. “I think it’s
under enormous pressure to get those
checks out as quickly as possible.”
The IRS probably will be able to get
some checks out in three or four weeks,
said Olson, who now serves as execu-
tive director of the nonprofit Center for
Taxpayer Rights. “But I don’t think ev-
erybody should expect their check in
that time. And it will take a period of
time to get a bunch of those checks out.”
Adding to the IRS’s pressures are
staffing issues – the agency’s workforce
has shrunken by 20% over the past dec-
ade – and limitations caused by its ag-
ing tax-processing apparatus.
The IRS’s information technology
systems are among the oldest in the fed-
eral government. Two of its database
systems – one master file that holds the
record of all taxpayers and another that
contains records of business tax ac-
counts – date back to the 1960s.
Olson and others have warned for
years that the IRS doesn’t have the tech-
nology it needs to do its job. The agency
has tried to patch the problems by lay-
ering smaller systems and applications
onto its older systems. “The IRS has
erected a 50-story office building on top
of a creaky, 60-year-old foundation, and
it is adding a few more floors every year,”
Olson wrote in her taxpayer advocate
report to Congress last year.
A dramatic example of the system’s
limitations happened two years ago,
when IRS computers became over-
whelmed and crashed as millions of
Americans tried to file their returns and
make payments on Tax Day.The agencywas forced to give taxpayers an addi-
tional day to file and pay their taxes.
To help process the stimulus checks,
the IRS said it will create a web-based
portal so that Americans who haven’t
already provided their direct deposit in-
formation to the government can do so
online. But Gleckman questioned how
quickly the agency would be able to get
such a portal up and running.
The IRS did not respond to questions
about whether it is building the portal or
hiring a contractor to do the work. But
“if they are going to try to build it, there
is noway they can build this thing in a
week,” Gleckman said.
Many taxpayers didn’t see a check for
months when the government autho-
rized stimulus rebates during the Great
Recession in 2008. Back then, only 60%
of taxpayers filed their returns electron-
ically. Nearly 90%of all taxpayers file
their tax returns electronically today.
But when it comes to paper checks,
the IRS is limited in the number it can
process in any given week, said Garrett
Watson, an economist at the nonprofit
Tax Foundation.
“This is partly due to out-of-date
technology,” Watson said, “but is also
driven by the fact that the IRS doesn’t
have a smooth process to quickly send
out tens of millions of rebates in only a
handful of weeks.”
Olson said taxpayers deserve a more
detailed explanation of when they can
expect the checks: “I worry the IRS is
not going to be allowed to say that be-
cause the administration wants people
to have some hope that the check is in
the mail, even if it isn’t.”Checks
Continued from Page 1A
Two of the IRS’s databasesystems – one master filethat holds the recordof all taxpayers and anotherthat contains records ofbusiness tax accounts –date back to the 1960s.