The World Health Organization has announced that the new coronavirus COVID-19 has a higher death rate than the flu.
Brian Labus, professor of public health, provides you with the safety information you need, from disinfectants to food storage.
What to do to prevent infection?
When people have a respiratory illness such as COVID-19, they cough or sneeze, releasing particles into the air. If someone is coughing near you, the virus can easily get into your eyes, nose, or mouth. These particles only spread over 1.8 meters and settle fairly quickly.
However, they land on surfaces that you constantly touch, such as railings, doorknobs, elevator buttons, or subway poles. The average person also touches the face 23 times per hour, and about half of them touch the mouth, eyes and nose, which are the mucosal surfaces that the COVID-19 virus infects.
Public health professionals should emphasize this: proper hand washing is the best thing you can do to protect yourself from a range of diseases, including COVID-19. Although hand washing is preferred, hand sanitizers with an alcohol concentration of at least 60 percent can be an effective alternative to the constant use of soap and water, as long as your hands are not heavily contaminated.
Wouldn't it be easier to just clean the surfaces?
Not really. Public health experts do not fully understand the role that these surfaces play in disease transmission, and you can still catch the virus that gets on you.
We also don't know how long the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 can survive on hard surfaces, although other coronaviruses can survive up to nine days on hard surfaces such as stair railings.
Frequent cleaning can remove the virus if the surface is contaminated by a sick person. In these situations, it is important to use a disinfectant that is considered effective against the COVID-19 virus.
While certain products have not yet been tested against the COVID-19 coronavirus, there are many products that are effective against the common coronavirus family. Cleaning recommendations using 'natural' products like vinegar are popular on social media, but there is no evidence that they are effective against the coronavirus.
You must also use these cleaners properly as instructed, which usually means the surface must remain wet for some time, often several minutes. Simply wiping the surface with a cleaning agent is usually not enough to kill the virus.
In short, it's impossible to properly clean every surface you touch throughout the day, so hand washing is still the best protection against COVID-19.
What about wearing masks?
Masks often provide little more than a false sense of security for the wearer. Masks – work well for filtering out large particles such as dust.
The problem is that the particles that carry the COVID-19 virus are small and easily move right through dust masks and surgical masks. These masks may provide some protection to other people if you wear them when you are sick – for example, coughing into tissue – but they will do little to protect you from other sick people.
N95 masks, which filter out 95 percent of small virus-containing particles, are worn in healthcare settings to protect doctors and nurses from respiratory illness. These masks provide protection only when worn correctly.
Make sure the mask provides a seal around your face and that air does not seep into the sides. Mask wearers must also take special steps when removing the mask to contaminate themselves with viral particles that the mask has filtered out.
If you don’t put on the mask after taking it off, put it in your pocket, and don’t use it later, even the best mask will not do any good after you take it off.
Do I need to stock up?
As a general preparedness step, you should have a three-day supply of food and water in case of emergencies. This helps protect against water interruptions or power outages.
While this is a great general preparation advice, it won't help you during an outbreak. There is no reason to expect that COVID-19 will cause the same damage to our infrastructure as it does after earthquakes, hurricanes or floods.
A Wuhan-type quarantine is highly unlikely, as quarantine will not stop the spread of the disease found worldwide. The types of disruptions you should plan for are small disruptions in your daily life.
You should have a plan in case you are unable to leave your home for several days. This includes providing basic supplies such as food and medicine.
You don't need to cook something extreme; a little preparation based on common sense will make your life a lot easier.
Brian Labus, Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
This article is reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Sources: Photo: Claudio Schwarz / Unsplash
