The Great Indian Jugaad

INDIANS ARE NO STRANGERS to hardship but the current coronavirus pandemic has surely tested the limits of desi homegrown cleverness. Here we feature some of the ways in which the Indian jugaadu came through against COVID-19.

- ISHANI NANDI, NAOREM ANUJA, KRITIKA BANERJEE AND SAPTAK CHOUDHURY

VIRUS-FREE IN 15

An old refrigerator becomes a disinfection chamber

1 What do you usually do with an old refrigerator? Look up some websites for a good deal and sell it off, right? But two resourceful masterminds—Dr Arun M. Isloor, a professor and head of the chemistry department at the National Institute of Technology, Karnataka, and research scholar Syed Ibrahim—had a better idea.

Disinfecting personal-use objects like wallets, keys and mobile phones, or sensitive items such as food or currency notes, to prevent transmission of the coronavirus was not only a hassle, it also damaged items and left room for improper cleaning. Hoping to help ordinary folk keep up the safety measure, the scientist duo hatched an ingenious solution. They hooked up an old refrigerator with three ultraviolet (UV-C) lamps—a well-proven means of destroying surface contamination— turning the throwaway appliance into a low-cost, toxin-free, easy-to-assemble disinfection chamber.

Dubbed Zero-Cov, the creators claim that the chamber kills 99.9 per cent of microorganisms present on any object—even highly contaminated PPE kits or masks—in just 15 minutes.

User beware, though: UV-C is harmful upon direct exposure to the body, so don't even think about climbing in there to avoid taking a shower.

Source: NDTV

THE NO-PRESSURE COVID HACK

From cooker to sterilizer

2 YOU’D BE hard-pressed to find an Indian kitchen without a pressure cooker. But who knew it could sterilize vegetables too?