Why whisky could kill the coronavirus (but drinking it won’t work)
- The virus that causes Covid-19 appears more vulnerable than Sars, which means a 40 per cent solution, typically found in alcoholic spirits, can be enough to destroy it
- Researchers stress that downing shots is not recommended but strong liquor could be used as an emergency sanitiser
The new coronavirus is more sensitive to alcohol than Sars or Mers and can be killed almost completely by ethanol concentrations as low as 30 per cent, according to a joint study by scientists from Germany and Switzerland.
Though many spirits such as whisky or gin have an alcohol content higher than that, scientists do not recommend using them as a disinfectant unless in desperate situations and they stressed that people should not regard drinking as a way to prevent or cure Covid-19.
Stephanie Pfaender, the lead scientist of the study, said on Wednesday that their experiment was conducted in a laboratory setting, therefore “one cannot directly translate these findings towards personal use upon application of whiskey, rum etc”.
She continued: “We would definitely not recommend the behaviour (of drinking), as we are talking about a minimal final alcohol concentration that has to come into contact with the virus for a defined time.”
Pfaender, from the department for molecular and medical virology in the Ruhr-University Bochum, and her collaborators used a viral strain from a patient in Munich and then infected animal cells with it. These cells were then placed in alcohol solutions of various strengths.