JOHN DAY — Blue Mountain Hospital has a new weapon in the fight against infection.

It’s called the BlueMorph C1 UVC, and it uses ultraviolet radiation to kill viruses, bacteria and other microbes that can spread disease.

But if you want, you can call him Pluto — “because of his big, long nose,” explains Lisa Audis, one of the hospital’s nine environmental services technicians. EVS, as the department is known for short, is responsible for keeping the hospital’s patient rooms clean.

And, in fact, it’s easy to see the resemblance between the C1 and the beloved Disney character.

Mounted on a pair of bicycle wheels, the unit consists of a steel frame that stands about 5 feet tall when folded for storage or 7 feet tall when extended for use, with a chunky box filled with electrical circuitry around the midsection.

The business end of the device is that Pluto-like schnozz — technically known as the emitter. Attached to the top of the frame, it’s an array of six 42-inch-long glass tubes mounted in a housing that looks a bit like a ray gun from an old science-fiction magazine.

The tubes are much like the fluorescent light bulbs commonly used for office lighting. When switched on, they emit a pale purple glow — along with a blast of shortwave ultraviolet radiation designed to kill the full spectrum of microorganisms that can cause disease, including viruses such as the one that causes COVID-19.

“The ultraviolet light damages DNA,” said Shauna Phillips, the hospital’s director of infection prevention, employee health and environmental services. “It destroys the virus’s ability to replicate.”

Blue Mountain Hospital purchased the BlueMorph room sanitizer about six months ago for $37,000, using a federal grant aimed at combating the spread of COVID-19.

“We wanted to make sure we were protecting our patients and our staff,” Phillips said.

To sanitize a room between patients, the EVS techs will trundle the C1 unit in, swing the emitter into place and set a timer based on the size of the room. Then they’ll step out of the room, close the door behind them and use a remote-control console to turn the unit on.

Prolonged exposure to UVC radiation can be damaging to human health, so the machine is designed to have a limited range. It also has motion sensors that automatically turn the emitter off if someone walks into the room during use.

According to a third-party study sponsored by the manufacturer, the BlueMorph C1 is 99.99% effective at killing the human coronavirus.

Phillips and some of her staff set up the machine for a demonstration in the hospital’s nursery.

“This will run for about 11 minutes, which takes the place of about three hours of hand sanitization,” Phillips said. “It’s about 250 times more effective than spray disinfectant.”

Not that the new machine eliminates the need for manual cleaning entirely. The EVS crew still cleans each of the hospital’s 14 patient rooms between uses — stripping the beds, washing the linens and towels, scrubbing the sinks and toilets and wiping down everything, from the chairs and mattresses to the cupboards and windowsills, with medical-grade disinfectant.

“Nothing beats a good, old-fashioned hand scrubbing,” said Audis, “but this helps.”

“A lot,” added fellow EVS tech Tammy Hyder.

In some situations, the C1 saves the cleaning crew time by eliminating the need to put on full-body personal protective equipment. But its greatest benefit, according to Audis, is the added peace of mind it provides for frontline health care workers who spend their days in a germ-rich environment.

“Just the mental part of it, knowing you’re getting it (clean) and you’re not going to end up with something — it just makes you feel safer,” Audis said.

“And it makes you feel better about putting another person in there.”