The following two paragraphs below from the Smithsonian Magazine article gives us a simple understanding of why and how soap and or alcohol of 60%, break down SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, coronavirus, making it incapacitated.
Why Is Washing Your Hands So Important, Anyway?
“In many ways, soap molecules are ideal for the task at hand. Soap can incapacitate SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses that have an outer coating called an envelope, which helps the pathogens latch onto and invade new cells. Viral envelopes and soap molecules both contain fatty substances that tend to interact with each other when placed in close proximity, breaking up the envelopes and incapacitating the pathogen. “Basically, the viruses become unable to infect a human cell,” Permar says.
Alcohol-based hand sanitizers also target these vulnerable viral envelopes, but in a slightly different way. While soap physically dismantles the envelope using brute force, alcohol changes the envelope’s chemical properties, making it less stable and more permeable to the outside world, says Benhur Lee, a microbiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. (Note that “alcohol” here means a chemical like ethanol or isopropyl alcohol—not a beverage like vodka, which contains only some ethanol.)”
Please read the entire article at Smithsonian Magazine!
There is also a graphic!