BYU Study: Alcohol-free Hand Sanitizers Effective Against COVID-19 Virus

While there has been an emphasis on using hand sanitizers that contain at least 60% alcohol during the pandemic, a new study from researchers at Brigham Young University (BYU) finds that alcohol-free hand sanitizer is just as effective at disinfecting surfaces from the COVID-19 virus as alcohol-based products.

According to the study recently published in the The Journal of Hospital Infection, BYU researchers treated samples of the novel coronavirus with benzalkonium chloride, which is commonly used in alcohol-free hand sanitizers, and several other quaternary ammonium compounds regularly found in disinfectants. In most of the test cases, the compounds wiped out at least 99.9% of the virus within 15 seconds.

“Our results indicate that alcohol-free hand sanitizer works just as well, so we could, maybe even should, be using it to control COVID,” said lead study author Benjamin Ogilvie.

The team believes their findings may actually provide a change in government directions about hand sanitizer and relieve any product shortages in the market.

“People were already using it before 2020,” said BYU professor and coauthor Brad Berges of alcohol-free sanitizers. “It just seems like during this pandemic, the non-alcohol-based hand sanitizers have been thrown by the wayside because the government was saying, ‘we don’t know that these work,’ due to the novelty of the virus and the unique lab conditions required to run tests on it.”

Since benzalkonium chloride typically works well against viruses surrounded by lipids—like COVID-19—the researchers believed that it would also be effective for disinfecting the coronavirus.