Decontamination of Technical Rope Rescue Equipment in the COVID-19 Novel Coronavirus pandemic

The SARS-CoV-2 novel human coronavirus, also known globally as COVID-19 and HCoV-19, emerged in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, and is now is causing a global pandemic. At time of writing this pandemic has resulted in 4,170,424 confirmed cases, and, 287,399 deaths (World Health Organisation, 2020b). Despite the risk of contagion, especially from body products as a result of injury, Technical Rescue activities cannot be ceased.
We have incorporated the existing literature on both anti-viral decontamination in general, the known persistence of SARS-CoV-2 on various surfaces and the construction and usage of rescue equipment to consider if effective and safe protocols for the preparation and decontamination of Technical Rescue equipment are available. The importance of continuing Technical Rescue activities, and therefore the importance of determining effective cleaning protocols is discussed, and future work on the impacts of decontamination agents on Technical Rescue equipment is called for.