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Virus prevention
Hand
washing
is handy
The single most important piece of advice health experts can give to help us stay safe from COVID-19 is this one: Wash your hands.
According to WebMD:
“In the final analysis, it’s the hands. The hands are the connecting piece,” says Elizabeth Scott, PhD. Scott co-directs the Center for Hygiene and Health in Home and Community at Simmons University in Boston.
“You can’t necessarily control what you touch. You can’t control who else touched it. But you can look after your own hands,” she says.
Hand-washing works on two fronts: “The first thing that’s happening is that you’re physically removing things from your hands. At the same time, for certain agents, the soap will actually be busting open that agent, breaking it apart.”
How to Wash Your Hands
Scrub away! There’s a correct way to wash your hands and get rid of germs.
Coronaviruses, like this year’s version that has left 100,000 worldwide infected with COVID-19, are encased in a lipid envelope — basically, a layer of fat. Soap can break that fat apart and make the virus unable to infect you.
The second thing soap does is mechanical. It makes skin slippery so that with enough rubbing, we can pry germs off and rinse them away.
Sounds pretty simple, but the vast majority of people still don’t do it right.
A 2013 study had trained observers discreetly watch more than 3,700 people wash their hands. It found that only about 5% of them followed all the rules. About one in four people just wet their hands without using soap. About one in 10 didn’t wash at all after a trip to the restroom. The most common shortcoming for most people was time. Only 5% spent more than 15 seconds washing, rubbing, and rinsing their hands.
That’s not good enough if you’re trying to keep from getting sick.
Step 1:
Turn on the water. It doesn’t matter if it’s hot or cold.
“We’ve done research on water temperature, and what we’ve discovered is that water temperature doesn’t really matter in terms of effectiveness,” says Donald Schaffner, PhD, who studies predictive food microbiology, hand-washing, and cross-contamination at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.
Step 2:
Second, lather up. The soap helps germs slip off your skin as you rub your hands together.
Pick a liquid or gel over foaming pump soap. A 2017 study that compared liquid and foam soaps from the same brand found that washing with foam didn’t significantly reduce bacteria on the hands of people who were in the study, while washing with a liquid soap did. “People tend to wash their hands for a shorter duration with the foam soap,” says Ozlem Equils, MD, president of an educational nonprofit called MiOra.
Bacteria can stay on bar soap that stays wet because it gets used frequently. But studies that have looked to see whether that’s a problem show that the bacteria don’t seem to transfer to the next user. If your bar looks slimy, rinse it off under water before you lather your hands, and try to store it so it will dry out between uses.
Step 3:
How long? At least 20 seconds, according to the CDC. As you’ve probably heard, that’s the same amount of time it takes to sing “Happy Birthday to You” twice.
Step 4:
Drying. Experts say paper towels actually have a beneficial effect beyond simply washing. Rubbing your hands with a paper towel removes even more germs than just washing alone. Dry hands are also less likely to spread contamination than wet hands.
If you’re in a public bathroom, and there’s no soap, just rubbing your hands together under the water does do some good. A 2011 study from researchers at the London School of Tropical Hygiene found that washing with water alone reduced bacteria on hands to about one-quarter of their prewash state. Washing with soap and water brought bacterial counts down to about 8% of where they were before washing.
“Typically, spots people will miss will be the back of the hands, lower palm, around the fingernails and the nail bed area,” according to experts.
How often do you need to wash? A lot. The CDC says to wash your hands: Before, during, and after food prep; before eating; before and after tending to someone who’s sick; before and after treating a cut or other wound; after going to the bathroom; after changing diapers or helping a child in the bathroom; after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing; after touching an animal, or touching pet food or pet waste’ after handling pet food or pet treats; after touching garbage.
If you can’t wash, reach for some hand sanitizer. Lipid membrane viruses like coronaviruses are killed by alcohol-based hand sanitizer, experts say. Just make sure it’s at least 62% alcohol.
Make sure to use enough so that it covers all the surfaces on your hands. Rub that on until your hands feel dry, which should take about 20 seconds.
If you still have some skin left on your hands after all that washing, try to keep it clean. Avoid touching contaminated surfaces. Use a clean paper towel to open bathroom doors. Disinfect dirty surfaces that you use every day, like the touchscreen on your phone and your computer keyboard.
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