Amid the current crisis dealing with the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, everyone is trying to figure out the most effective way to protect themselves against the virus. Many people are jumping right to face masks (and no, not the relaxing kind) and avoiding contact with people as much as possible. While these steps can help if done properly, the best and simplest way to protect yourself against getting the Coronavirus is to wash your hand properly and cough/sneeze into your elbow. The same steps you should be taking to also protect yourself from getting the cold or the flu. You see, the COVID-19 is spread through respiratory droplets. These droplets are the particles that come out of your mouth or nose when you cough or sneeze. They can travel on surface and survive on them for several days, making people who are in contact with those surfaces susceptible to getting the virus. So as long as you are aware of this fact, wash your hands, and cough/sneeze into your elbow you should be good! Right?
Well, that’s half right. You see, 97% of people wash their hands incorrectly. Yeah you read that right, 97%. When you wash your hands, you should be scrubbing your hands together with warm water and soap for at least 20 seconds. And don’t forget to scrub underneath your fingernails! Now you may be wondering, how exactly does soap work, and why is it important that I wash my hand effectively? Soap doesn’t actually kill the germs that are on our hands, it removes them entirely. Germs stick to all of oils and grease that are on our hands, and water alone can’t wash them off because they don’t mix together. That’s where soap comes in: the soap molecules can mix with both the oil on our hands and the water and can bind together. When you rinse you’re hands the soap molecules carry the germs off with them down the drain.
Just remember, whether or not you’re trying to protect yourself against the Coronavirus, you should always be washing your hands correctly and taking all of these precautions to help eliminate the spread of any other kind of illness.
Sources:
https://www.livescience.com/57044-science-of-soap.html
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html