Surfaces in the time of Coronavirus

The characteristics of surfaces in relation to the “chance of contamination” have never been a burning issue like today. If, in the past, we looked at anti-bacterial properties of surfaces with great interest, today they could even represent a new global standard, in a world challenged by the Covid-19 pandemic.

- Franco Bulian

An extremely touchy topic, where labels such as “anti-bacterial” or “anti-microbial” surfaces could represent a fundamental motivation for the market. But what are we really talking about?

How the world of furniture can and must deal with materials presenting such new potential?

The term “contagion”, which often occurs in our conversations during this period, has an interesting etymology deriving from the Latin words cum, meaning “together”, and tangere meaning “to touch”.

Indeed, the simple act of touching a surface can be the source of many infections and some studies testify, for example, that the door handles or the elevator buttons of crowded places are among the primary causes of the transmission of many viruses.

Contracting infection

These strange “biological entities” are, in fact, able to easily pass from the surfaces we touch to our hands and from the hands to our mouth and eyes, which represent a kind of open door through which they are finally able enter into our body.

In this regard, an Australian study published in 2015 proved that people are used to touch their faces very often (on average 23 times per hour) and viruses take great advantage of such gestures, even unconscious, to considerably spread their diffusion.

The transmission of the virus through the surfaces is evidently based on a first contact deriving from an infected person, mostly through the well-known “droplets” (saliva droplets transmitted through a sneeze, a cough or simply by speaking to another person) followed by the ability of the virus to survive on the contaminated surface.