Introduction: Everywhere in our daily lives, we encounter multiple surfaces that have been previously touched by someone else. High-touch surfaces are found everywhere. We have self-checkout at the grocery store, options to order on a touch-screen before getting in line, and pin pads on the point-of-sale devices at thousands of retail outlets.
Methods: In 2020 and 2021, a comparison of UVC disinfection versus enhanced liquid disinfection practices on high-touch surfaces was made. The settings included a sports stadium in Australia and 5 airports and 6 retail/pharmacy locations in the USA states and Canada. A total of 111 high-touch surfaces were sampled, and over 300 swabs were obtained to compare enhanced liquid disinfection practices to automated UVC disinfection on the same surfaces.
Since UVC disinfection practices on high-touch surfaces have not garnered much awareness, the public-facing environments we were testing would not allow manual cleaning to stop.
Results: The primary outcome measure was defined as the total reduction of samples with quantitative aerobic bacterial growth, before and after installing the UVC device.
Of 113 high-touch surfaces sampled before the UVC unit installation, there were 6,830,189 Aerobic Colony Forming Units (CFU) isolated. After the installation and over 24 hours of operations of the UVC device, surfaces showed a 98.5% reduction in aerobic bacteria bioburden with 100,778 Aerobic Colony Forming Units (CFU) isolated.
Conclusions: The results from this study indicate that the use of an automated UVC device could significantly decrease bacterial colonization on high-touch surfaces in retail keypads and public touch-screen devices.