Call ‘Morty the Killer’: He kills them all, even COVID

Morty – the Latin-inspired nickname for a high-tech, “Germ-Zapping Robot” that eradicates viruses and bacteria lurking secretly in hospital rooms and sweaty gymnasiums – is doing its best to ensure that Jesuit High School’s facilities are pristine for the 2020-21 academic year, whenever students return to campus.
    

The $100,000 virus-killing machine was donated four years ago by 1997 alumnus Joseph Authement. When all schools in the Archdiocese of New Orleans shifted to remote learning last March, Jesuit loaned Morty for three months to East Jefferson General Hospital’s emergency department, helping keep the hospital sanitized during the early explosion of the COVID-19 pandemic.
 

Blinding UVC light
    

The device uses pulsing, high-intensity xenon, an inert gas that is not harmful to humans, through a xenon ultraviolet flashlamp. Morty produces intense ultraviolet C (UVC) light that can penetrate the cell walls of microorganisms, and the blast of light destroys the DNA and RNA bond that holds cells together, making it impossible for the organisms to replicate.
    

“The UVC spectrum light that is derived from pulse xenon can deliver 10,000 times the intensity of sunlight,” said Authement, who was senior vice president of sales for Xenex Disinfection Services when he arranged for the robot to be given to the school after he heard of concerns that bacteria and potentially deadly pathogens in the school’s athletics facilities, including the wrestling mats, might have posed a health risk to student-athletes.
    

The science behind the sanitizing technology is fascinating. Since the UVC spectrum is blocked by the earth’s atmosphere, UVC has to be manufactured on earth. Since “organisms can’t build up an immunity to UVC,” the xenon light blasts are lethal, Authement said.
    

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools into closing their campuses and going to distance learning in March, Jesuit Father John Brown, Jesuit’s interim president, approved a request from two East Jefferson physicians to use the machine at EJ.
 

Great benefit to hospital
    

Dr. Roland Waguespack, chief of the medical staff and medical director of the emergency department, and Dr. Charles Haddad, Jesuit’s team doctor and vice chair of the orthopedics department at EJ, are both alumni of the school and knew about the robot.
    

“Charles reached out to me to see if it might be of some benefit to the hospital with the school closed and no sport activities going on,” Waguespack said. “We thought we might be able to use it, and Jesuit quickly came through and said they would love for us to have it be used in our emergency department.”
    

“It was the easiest thing in the world,” Father Brown said about the decision to loan out the virus killer. “As soon as we realized we would not be having students in the gym or athletic facilities, we knew that the hospital had a need for it. Whenever we don’t have students here, it seems like the right thing to do, to loan it to a place that could really use it.”
 

Quick and effective
    

Morty’s results were impressive at EJ. Over several weeks, it sterilized 787 rooms for the virus, and since each room was visited by an average of three health care workers, it kept more than 2,000 interactions safe from the virus, Waguespack said.
    

“With the number of health care workers who go in and out of those rooms, it made for a safer environment for the patients and workers,” Waguespack said. “We used that machine non-stop, 24/7.”
    

The machine’s most amazing feature is its speed, Waguespack said. It takes 10 to 15 minutes to sanitize a room, compared to an hours-long “terminal clean,” which involves wiping down the room with bleach and disinfectant and then waiting for it to air dry.
    

“The machine cuts down on the amount of time that it takes to clean and have ready for the next patient by roughly an hour and a half,” Waguespack said. “We could turn over the rooms faster, and that meant a safer environment for all of our patients. It was used primarily in the emergency department, and it’s important to note that it freed up the other two robots the hospital has to clean other areas of the hospital, including the COVID units.”
 

Old Roman nickname
    

Members of Jesuit’s Robotics Club came up with the catchy nickname “Morty” as a play on the Latin root of the word “mors,” which means death. In this case, Morty can do a lethal number on COVID-19. An independent lab in San Antonio recently confirmed that UVC light “kills COVID in less than two minutes,” Authement said.
    

One of the major safety features of the device is that it does not use any toxic gas to kill the microorganisms, unlike other models on the market that use mercury light bulbs.
    

“Imagine if anyone broke one of those mercury bulbs, and mercury is poisonous,” Authement said. “Mercury does not put out the same spectrum of light as pulse xenon. To kill COVID, it would take a mercury device about an hour as opposed to two minutes.”
    

Another safety feature of the machine is that a sensor shuts it off in milliseconds if a door is opened accidentally during the cleaning process.
    

Morty is back at Carrollton and Banks, just waiting for the first football, basketball and wrestling workouts. At Jesuit, Morty runs through his paces at night, when no one is around, wheeled from room to room to sanitize the athletic facilities. It has led to a decrease in the number of staph infections among the school’s wrestlers.
    

“We just feel so fortunate that Jesuit has such a machine, and it has also given us the opportunity to help others,” Father Brown said.
    

“We were so grateful to have it,” Waguespack said.
    

Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].