Most viruses (if I'm not wrong) do not "live" long outside the host, and most require close contact to transfer or direct contact of bodily fluids. So in the environment, bleach or alcohol (water/soap) is enough to "kill" them.

And inside the host but outside cells... I'm pretty sure there is enough immune response to remove them.

As for the question...well... you do have to get pass the viral capsule first. And there is nothing specific about proteolytic enzymes or DNAse/RNAse that would only target the virus and not host cells.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virucide

The short answer is yes, but this a big and rather complicated topic. Viruses, are as you said the zombies of the microbe world. They are neither dead nor truly alive until they are within a host cell. They hijack cells and use the cells machinery to propagate, essentially making the host a "factory" for their production. The way these viruses integrate with the host cells adds to the difficulty in their eradication. Also, how do you kill something that isn't truly alive? Double jeopardy!

But there are methods used to terminate viruses. They can (in principle) be killed (dead-er?) by certain physical energies including light and heat in specific ranges. And elimination of their reservoirs, vectors and hosts essentially gives them no way to exist. Regarding treatment, there are two main domains - immunology and pharmacological agents. Immunoprophylaxis either active (example, live vaccines) or passive (immunoglobulins) have had incredible success with the herpes group of viruses, rotavirus, hepatitis A & B, HPV among others. Antiviral chemotherapy with pharmacological agents are broadly (1) virucidal agents, which directly inactivate viruses, (2) antiviral agents, which inhibit viral replication, and (3) immunomodulators, which boost the host immune response. Interferons - cytokines produced by virus-infected cells are also being reengineered to treat some infections.

The drugs used essentially prevent viral replication by interfering with the enzymes required for their propagation. For instance, Aciclovir, one of the most widely used antiviral agents inhibits the DNA polymerase enzyme preventing viral replication. It is effective against several viruses, notably Varicella zoster that causes chickenpox and other viruses of the Herpes family.

Unfortunately, these agents are able to "suppress" the infections but not truly "kill" the viruses.

What is dead may never die?

Are we talking about virucides outside the host? Then, thats the first results you'll get, when you google "virucide", tons of chemical compounds.

But inside the host; not really, only virostatics are available.

Dismayed to see the poor quality of the Wikipedia entry listed above. IFN is NOT a virucide...

Inside the host is a more interesting topic - the answer isn't necessarily a straight "no". There is at least one licensed and more experimental drugs (often peptides and peptide analogs) that are thought to work by disabling the viral fusion protein. Enfuvirtide is the licensed one for HIV (with a decent Wikipedia page) and there are various experimental ones for Flu A and probably other viruses. If any of these are non-reversible (e.g. by prematurely flipping the viral entry receptor into the fusion conformation) then I would define them as virucidal. Arbidol (with a more dubious Wiki page) might count as another licensed compound, but I'm not certain of the mechanism of action.

Some of the host responses also count as virucidal - there's a substantial amount of literature on complement deposition on enveloped viruses for instance.

Paul

may be