key: cord-285852-ocu69od2
authors: Luqman, Zubair; Iqbal, Nasir; Ali, Hafiz Muhammad; Zahid, Muhammad; Sikandar, Arbab; Kausar, Razia
title: Disinfection of corona virus in histopathology laboratories
date: 2020-06-25
journal: Clin Anat
DOI: 10.1002/ca.23636
sha: 
doc_id: 285852
cord_uid: ocu69od2

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS CoV‐2/COVID‐19) is a highly contagious and deadly disease caused by a virus belonging to the coronaviridae family. Researchers working in histopathology laboratories, dealing with morbid samples, are particularly vulnerable to infection unless they have very strong immunity. Hence, a proper precautionary protocol is required for the safety of the laboratory staff. The current review highlights the biological and physical agents that can be used to inactivate the virus and disinfect the surrounding environment in the laboratory.

Zoonotic and infectious diseases involve multiple causative agents such as viruses, parasites and bacteria present among humans and animals that can be transferred to healthy humans involved in procedures for controlling and treating their ailments (Zhu et al., 2019) .

Severe acute respiratory syndrome, also termed SARS-CoV, was first (Lim et al., 2004; Rachael, 2004; World Health Organization [WHO], 2003 , 2006 . There could have been many more symptomatic and asymptomatic cases of such laboratory-acquired infections, but they were seldom reported by the researchers. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS CoV-2/COVID-19) is a highly communicable and lethal virus (WHO, 2020). Since genetic drift and shift are major characteristics of coronaviruses, scientists named this virus Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (abbreviated to SARS-CoV-2) on the grounds of its similarity to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-1 (abbreviated to SARS-CoV). The zoonotic and remarkably infectious coronavirus named COVID-19 was initially recognized in Wuhan City in the People's Republic of China in a man with a history of contact with seafood (Perlman, 2020).

Scientists working in histopathology laboratories, handling morbid samples, can be infected with this dangerous virus and are more likely to be susceptible to it regardless of well-functioning immune systems.

Hence, an intense precautionary protocol is required in the laboratory.

This review focuses on physical and biological agents that can be used to inactivate the virus. In histopathology laboratories, additional efforts must be adopted to render the virus inactive during tissue processing (Darnell, Subbarao, Feinstone, & Taylor, 2004) . For researchers such as histopathologists who deal with morbid tissue samples, inactivation of the coronavirus has proved one of the greatest challenges of the present day.

Suspected as well as infected coronavirus samples should be collected and submitted to the histopathological laboratories as per WHO guidelines (Gorbalenya et al., 2020; Guarner, 2020) . As this virus has been reported to be 75-80% similar to SARS-CoV and it is transmitted mainly via inanimate objects and large droplets, it has become widespread in the

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