How To Implement Better Personal Hygiene To Combat Coronavirus
The first line of defense against coronavirus is proper personal hygiene. This means hand washing and making sure you and your family keep yourselves as clean as possible and limit the interaction you have with others and surfaces that may be contaminated with coronavirus.
The virus can live on surfaces for days; cleaning these often should also be part of your cleanliness routine.
How Long Coronavirus Lives on Different Surfaces
It is known that coronavirus can survive on different surfaces you come into contact with every day for significant periods of time. Generally, we know that coronavirus can survive this long on these surfaces:
- Air - coronavirus can live for three hours in the air
- Copper - 4 hours on copper surfaces like pennies, water pipes and copper cookware
- Cardboard - coronavirus can survive for 24 hours on cardboard
- Stainless Steel - it can live on stainless steel for two to three days
- Plastic - coronavirus lives on plastic for three days
With this information put into context, it’s easy to see why it’s important to wash your hands often after touching these surfaces. That also means we need to clean these surfaces often as well.
How to Implement Better Personal Hygiene
As mentioned, the first line of defense against coronavirus is hand washing. You’ll need to wash your hands frequently, but also after doing certain activities. Try to wash your hands after:
- Re-entering your home from the outdoors
- Grabbing packages that arrive
- Touching your keys
- Grabbing the dog’s leash
- Unloading groceries
- Going through the mail
Make it a habit to not touch your face, mouth, nose or eyes with unwashed hands. Teach your children about the dangers of coronavirus and show them how to properly wash their hands for 20 seconds or longer, paying extra attention to their fingertips and thumbs.
In order to expand this routine to be more efficient, you should also clean the items you touch often like your keys, phone, tablet, remote controls, game controllers and doorknobs.
Also, examine your bathing routine as well. You want your bed to be as clean as possible. So make it a habit to also bathe twice a day, once when you wake up and once before bed to avoid any cross-contamination with your clothing. Purchase a soothing body wash that will be gentle on your skin with the increased usage.
What to Do When You Leave the House
Carry hand sanitizer with you when you leave the house so that you can keep your hands clean even when soap and water aren’t available. When you return, leave your clothes in a dedicated laundry basket. Keep your work bags and lunch boxes in a box by the door and disinfect them before washing your hands.
The goal is to avoid bringing contaminated things into your home where they can assist the virus in infecting someone in the home. Once you get in the habit of washing your hands often, you’ll be on your way to keeping your house and family safe.
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