Is your protective gear causing coronavirus cross-contamination?

With coronavirus wreaking havoc across the globe, strict lockdowns and social distancing measures have been enforced to contain the pandemic.

However, frontline workers, especially in the healthcare industry continue to be at the highest risk of contracting the virus!

Also read: No, 5G waves do not transmit coronavirus!

Even as panic-stricken people hoard masks and gloves, cross-contamination is a very real threat and danger.

For instance, when people wear gloves in public places, the risk of cross contamination multiplies tremendously.

How does it work?

To explain simply, you go to a grocery store, mind you - you have hand gloves on! Then you pick up an item, put it in the trolley. You touch the trolley in the process. Then you touch some fruits. Later you touch the door while leaving. Then all those germs that you picked up during the process, you take them home with you. You touch your car door with the same gloves and open your front door with the same gloves on! 

Scary, isn’t it?

After witnessing such contamination, a former health worker, Molly Lixey decided to make a video about how people are inadvertently contaminating more surfaces in the attempt of protecting themselves.

Lixey explained cross-contamination by using paint! 

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She stimulated a chain of contact and used paint to symbolise the germs she may have spread or picked up in the process. After touching an item, she attends a phone call, thereby attaching germs to her cellular device, without knowing so!

As she pretends to move across a grocery store stimulation, she picks up more paint, ie, germs, to represent how dangerously easy it is to trigger a chain of spreading germs!

As she picks up her phone and puts it across her cheek, the germs have now successfully found a way to her face, which is primarily how COVID-19 spreads.

So what should you do?

Even after all this contamination, one gets rid of the gloves, it will still remain lodged on some familiar surface, a phone? Headphones? Honestly, it could be anything.

In essence, wearing protective gear is very important, but frequent hand washing and sanitation plays a key role in limiting the clench of COVID-19!

Also read: iMask? Apple starts producing protective facial gear to help with coronavirus crisis

Additionally, one must disinfect their phones multiple times over the day, especially if they’re going out to buy supplies.

Even though earlier research claimed that the virus spreads only through coughing or sneezing, it turns out that it can spread simply by breathing, making everybody more vulnerable to the contagion!

Exercise caution and disinfect regularly, if you really want to steer away the killer virus!