Jacksonville Jaguars among NFL teams using silver to fight COVID-19

By Michael DiRocco, ESPN Staff Writer

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — There are relatively small gray and purple cartridges attached to the wall of the laundry area in the Jacksonville Jaguars’ equipment room. If you aren’t looking for them, you’d probably never notice them.

Even if you did look, you’d have no idea that those cartridges contain another piece of the Jaguars’ ongoing battle against the coronavirus.

Each cartridge contains a bag of silver ions called SilvaClean, a small dose of which is dispensed during the laundry’s rinse cycle, designed to bond with fabrics to kill pathogens such as MRSA, staph and — the company that manufactures it says — SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19.

“It’s really all about setting a new cleanliness standard, especially giving the situation that we are in,” said Priya Balachandran, the chief operations officer of Applied Silver, the company behind SilvaClean. “Everyone is paying close attention to hygiene and cleanliness like never before.

“… Our product, when you combine that with all of the other protocols, it gives people the validity to set the new standard for cleanliness.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, MRSA and staph have long been issues in athletic facilities, gyms, locker rooms and health clubs because people share equipment and have skin-to-skin contact. Staph, a bacteria found on skin, can cause serious skin infections, and if it gets into the blood, it can lead to sepsis or death, per the CDC.

Using ionic silver compounds to kill germs and pathogens such as MRSA and staph has already become widespread in the healthcare and hospitality industry, and it is beginning to work its way into the sports world. The Jaguars are one of six NFL teams using the SilvaClean system. San Francisco, Dallas and New Orleans are among the others. (Two other NFL teams did not give Applied Silver permission to release their names.) In addition, Cal-Poly San Luis Obispo and North Carolina State are among the colleges using the SilvaClean system.

Read the rest of the story in ESPN by Michael DiRocco