Antiviral Activity of Active Materials: Standard and Finger-Pad-Based Innovative Experimental Approaches

Environmental surfaces, including high-touch surfaces (HITS), bear a high risk of becoming fomites and can participate in viral dissemination through contact and transmission to other persons, due to the capacity of viruses to persist on such contaminated surface before being transferred to hands or other supports at sufficient concentration to initiate infection through direct contact. Interest in the development of self-decontaminating materials as additional safety measures towards preventing viral infectious disease transmission has been growing. Active materials are expected to reduce the viral charge on surfaces over time and consequently limit viral transmission capacity through direct contact. In this study, we compared antiviral activities obtained using three different experimental procedures by assessing the survival of an enveloped virus (influenza virus) and non-enveloped virus (feline calicivirus) over time on a reference surface and three active materials. Our data show that experimental test conditions can have a substantial impact of over 1 log₁₀ on the antiviral activity of active material for the same contact period, depending on the nature of the virus. We then developed an innovative and reproducible approach based on finger-pad transfer to evaluate the antiviral activity of HITS against a murine norovirus inoculum under conditions closely reflecting real-life surface exposure.