What follows are some common sense behavioral habits that can protect children and adults from acquiring viral illnesses of any type, whether one is worried about the common cold, influenza or novel 2019 Coronavirus.
1) NO HANDSHAKING! Use a fist bump, slight bow, elbow bump, etc.
2) Use ONLY your knuckle to touch light switches. elevator buttons, etc.. Lift the gasoline dispenser with a paper towel or use a disposable glove.
3) Open doors with your closed fist or hip - do not grasp the handle with your hand, unless there is no other way to open the door. Especially important with bathroom and post office/commercial doors.
4) Use disinfectant wipes at the stores when they are available, including wiping the handle and child seat in grocery carts.
5) Wash your hands with soap for 10-20 seconds and/or use a greater than 60% alcohol-based hand sanitizer whenever you return home from ANY activity that involves locations where other people have been.
6) Keep a bottle of sanitizer available at each of your home's entrances AND in your car for use after getting gas or touching other contaminated objects when you can't immediately wash your hands.
7) If possible, cough or sneeze into a disposable tissue and discard. Use your elbow only if you have to. The clothing on your elbow can contain infectious virus that can be passed on for hours or up to a week or more!
Note: This novel 2019 Coronavirus virus is spread in large droplets by coughing and sneezing. This means that the air will not infect you! BUT all the surfaces where these droplets land are infectious for many hours up to about a week on average - everything that is associated with infected people will be contaminated and potentially infectious. The virus is on surfaces and you will not be infected unless your unprotected face is directly coughed or sneezed upon. This virus only has cell receptors for lung cells (it only infects your lungs) The only way for the virus to infect you is through your nose or mouth via your hands or an infected cough or sneeze onto or into your nose or mouth.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/03/yes-worse-than-flu-busting-coronavirus-myths-covid-19
Now the real question is how do you take these basic principles and translate them into new and effective behaviors in children, adolescents and adults at home and out of the house. If you think about this question, I am sure you can create novel routine behaviors for your kids and your family that incorporate these basic principles.
Here are some thoughts about possible rules for the family:
1] Everyone washes their hands and/or uses hand sanitizer every time they enter the house and before they sit down to family meals.
2] Everyone uses hand sanitizer on entering and leaving the car_everytime.
3] Someone sprays all the doorknobs of the household once or twice a day, as well as the TV remotes, stairwell banisters, faucet handles, and toilet flush levers.
4] Parents encourage their children’s schools to allow all the kids to use sanitizer on entry and departure from every classroom and coming and going from school lunches.
5] Parents encourage their school’s bus systems to spray/wipe down their interior surfaces at the start and end of each day’s school bussing. This may take a few administrative bureaucratic phone calls to implement.
6] Parents agree that their children with minor colds/respiratory illness with which they would normally go to school, stay home until symptoms are gone and make arrangements with schools for video/telecommunication education or make up
7] Parents agree that their children with minor colds/respiratory illness do not go Urgent Care or local Emergency Rooms, but shelter in place at home until symptoms are gone, getting advice by phone from their personal physicians.
8] Parents arrange for their kids to carry pocket tissue to use at school.
This information and advice may be updated as the weeks and months go by and as knowledge increases about the Novel 2019 Coronavirus.
If any readers of my blog have additional practical thoughts for personal hygiene behaviors at home or in the community, I invite you to share them with me and others.
I hope these personal thoughts will be helpful during this time of community worry and vulnerability. You are welcome to share this blog with others.
Dr. T
3/03/2020