With the global pandemic reaching the time of its peak, there is nothing you can do that will help the Government more than staying within your homes for social distancing. Keep away from social interaction and wash your hands as often as you can. But with the public messages firing up for more hand washing, one must come to wonder, is it all that it takes?
Why is the Government telling us to wash our hands more frequently?
Coronavirus is a respiratory problem. This means that it affects the functioning of our lungs, with the most effective mode of transmission being through coughing and sneezing. If you cover your mouth with a tissue when coughing, try to dispose of it off as quickly as possible because the virus can end up on other surfaces as well. This virus is so efficient in the transmission that all you have to do is touch an infected surface for it to travel to your hand. This is why the Government repeatedly warns us to wash our hands so we can keep it from being transmitted to another person.
Keep from touching your face
If you touched an infected surface, the virus could easily travel to your hands. It is much easier to get infected severely if you touch your face. The virus can enter into our bodies through the eyes, mouth, and our noses. You will be surprised to find out how often you touch your face unknowingly. According to a statistic study, an average person touches his or her face on an average of twenty-three times in an hour.
While washing your hands more often helps in preventing infections, it is not the main reason why the Government is recommending it.
Does soap kill the coronavirus?
Coronavirus belongs to the class of viruses where they are enveloped. This means that they have a protective layer around them, known as the lipid bilayer. The molecules that make up the layer are in the shape of a tadpole with a hydrophilic round head and a hydrophobic tail.
Hydrophilic means that the heads of the molecules favor the water.
Hydrophobic means that the tails of the molecules shun away from the water.
The arrangement of the layer helps to pull them close to protect the hydrophobic tails when you have wet coughs or sneezes.
How does the structure aid in transmission?
The hydrophilic heads of the molecules are very sticky. They help the virus in sticking to your hands, and this is perfect for a microbe to cling to you while it is trying very hard to infect you. The molecules of the soaps also have the same structure as the tadpole, which is why it is so useful. When you have something oily on your hands, running water cannot get rid of it. Using soap will help to get the oil straight off.
When you rub your hands with soap, it destroys the neatly-ordered shell around the virus to dissolve it in the running water and kill the virus.
Why is it important to stop the spread of coronavirus?
For most people, coronavirus does not prove to be a particularly dangerous illness. In some people, the symptoms are milder than the others. They may feel a little flu, and then they will recover. The problem here is that while we are infected with the milder symptoms, you can still pass the disease on to other people who might suffer more.
Washing our hands lowers the risk of spreading the disease to other people, and this will encourage the ‘flattening the curve.’ With this, the number of cases will rise to the peak and then it will drop again.
How should you wash your hands properly?
- You can start by wetting your hands under open flowing water.
- It does not matter whether you are washing your hands in hot water or cold. According to a study from Rutgers University, most of the microorganisms were just as effectively removed with cold water as they were with hot water. One of these was the E. coli bacteria.
- After wetting your hands thoroughly, you can proceed by applying the handwash.
- You can use a soap bar or a liquid handwash to wash your hands thoroughly. Some of the studies show that the use of soap bar is discouraged because bacteria is known to stay alive on the bar for some time while other researches show that it cannot be transmitted through it anyway.
- To kill the bacteria or viruses on your hands effectively, you should wash your hands for twenty seconds.
- You need to rub your hands thoroughly and wipe in the area between your thumbs and fingers as well.
- You can sing along to a song as part of the new trend that emerged to make people wash their hands for twenty seconds straight. They can sing the lines of the song to pass this time.
Is the over-washing of the hands possible?
When you have to wash your hands more often, it can easily dry out the skin on your hands. It washes away the necessary oils on the surface of your skin, which helps to keep it healthy and moisturized. That is why you need to moisturize your hands properly after regularly washing them.
Finally!
There are people out there who deny all the harm brought through by coronavirus, but some of them even say that washing your hands does nothing to protect you from it. According to a specialist in pediatric diseases in Delaware, Dr. Shapiro, having a damaged skin makes the act of washing hands nearly useless. When the skin of your hands is chapped or broken, washing your hands properly can be uncomfortable and provide an easy route to the germs to enter your body. This why it is important that you not only wash your hands often and properly; you take care of them to minimize the transmission of coronavirus.
