We have been asked several times about products to clean organ consoles to protect from Covid-19.
As a general rule, however, we don’t recommend ANY cleaning chemicals on any parts of organs.
For a cleaning product to kill the Covid-19 virus the surface needs to be wetted and left to air dry. If this is done to a keyboard, there is a very real chance that the ivory can begin to lift off of the keys.
Other reports suggest alcohol may protect against Covid-19. This, however, will damage the French Polish of the console woodwork.
So, with the above in mind, we recommend the following:
On arrival at the organ console, wash your hands with soap and water or alcohol hand wash.
On leaving the organ, wash your hands again.
If you are in a teaching environment, or have many users of the organ, a face mask is recommended.
Finally, although regulations seemed to have eased (September 2022) another important thing to do is have a record of when the organ is used. The record should contain Date, Time, Name and contact number. This can be used for track and trace should any organist contract Covid-19, and can also be used to see when the organ was last played. A sample record can be downloaded here.
If its been more than 72 hours, the console should be naturally clean.