[RummyChick]

can someone explain this story to me. If washing hands kills the virus so should washing clothes

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11463015/coronavirus-can-survive-boiling-point/

[Raebie]

It’s the soap that kills the virus by destroying the lipid envelope. Not the heat.

[calenel]

Washing hands is to wash away the virus, not to kill it - although the soap should dissolve the outer membrane and render it inert. In theory the same rule should apply to clothes but laundry soap is not used in the same concentrations as hand soap. The mechanics of your washer will be different from the mechanics of washing your hands, too, leaving your clothes soaking much of the time rather than a scrub and hard rinse.

Wear a lot of durable fabrics and add bleach to every wash.

Or, perhaps the disposable paper clothing industry may make a comeback.

[LilFarmer]

Yikes, that’s not good. Maybe the soap makes the virus more vulnerable (destroying lipid layer)

[PA Engineer]

That study has been "misinterpreted" since it was published. That was for laboratories and not the wild. It failed to confirm or deny the temperature range and times for more established studies of MERs and SARs.

The other studies tested to a range where the RNA was not detectable. This study somehow keeps referring to "viral replication" outside a host animal or cell culture. I will wait till a pier review of the study is conducted.

I have the study somewhere. I found it to be a bit lacking and the reporters to be both ignorant and alarmist.