With businesses starting to reopen and people going out en masse to enjoy the warm weather, many have concerns expressed on a possible increase in coronavirus cases. However, we may have some reassuring news. A new study found that the summer sun can kill 90% of coronaviruses living on surfaces in just 34 minutes.

The study, conducted by Jose-Luis Sagripanti and David Lytle, retired scientists from the US Army and the FDA, appeared in the journal Photochemistry and Photobiology. The study finds that “midday sunlight in most cities in the United States and the world during the summer” effectively inactivates the COVID-19 virus that causes the surface, contradicting the statements of many public health officials in the last months.

The study also finds, as many have suspected, that the virus is most dangerous from December through March, when it can survive on the surface for a day or more “at risk of re-aerosolization and transmission in most of these cities.”

Sagripanti and Lytle even go so far as to suggest that the blockages may have caused more harm than good, saying that “healthy people outdoors receiving sunlight might have been exposed to lower viral doses with more chance of generating an efficient immune response” . This announcement comes as coronavirus cases continue to rise in several states across the country.

[via]