Can Non-Thermal Microwave Irradiation Inactivate Viruses? A Review with Some Computations

The use of the non-thermal electromagnetic waves to inactivate viruses has been proposed by a few groups; how microwave irradiation may alter virus infectivity is still object of investigation. In fact, the alleged transformation of a microwave photon into a phonon, in water or in organic media, has never been demonstrated. Microwave energy absorption in these media leads to heating, which generates many thermal phonons across a wide frequency spectrum, not a single coherent phonon at a specific frequency, able to produce an alleged Structure Resonance Energy Transfer (SRET) as strong as to break the capsid of a virion. The effective conversion of a single microwave photon to a single GHz phonon in water and/or organic media has been sometimes supposed but never demonstrated. However, there is still some emphasis on using non-thermal electromagnetic fields to destroy viruses. Hence, this paper poses the question: can human-safe microwave irradiation inactivate respiratory viruses?