Stop touching your face if want to fight diseases, including the coronavirus
‘Do not touch your face’ should be the advice, and not ‘avoid touching your face’.
When you say avoid, people interpret that as ‘it’s ok to touch touch sometimes’. And it is not sometimes then – it is periodically as much as 24 times in an hour, because it is a habit. The habit has to be broken and that is possible if the advice is ‘Do not touch your face if you want to not only fight coronavirus but a host of other diseases that can make their way via the mucus membranes of the MEN (Mouth, Eyes Nose),
Eyes, nose, mouth – all those mucus menbranes are the portal for a virus like Covid-19 or SARS’, says Mary Louise McLaws, a professor in the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. ‘By touching your mucus membranes you are giving a virus 11 opportunities every hour if you have touched something infectious’, she further says.
What should you do to avoid getting coronavirus infection:
- Frequent hand-washing – 20 seconds with soap and water
- Avoid touching MEN (Mouth, Eyes, Nose); if you have to use tissue to scratch
- Cover your cough – using your elbow, or tissue or even your hands
- Sanitizing objects in office and home daily help – use any disinfectant available to clean and then dry it. The virus is in your rooms and washrooms. Sanitize taps, door knobs, telephones, switches, desks, keyboards, vents, walls etc
- If unwell (fever, cough), see your doctor. Consider working from home
- If you feel you are getting breathless, see a hospital doctor
- Do not visit sick acquaintances
- Avoid visitors/relatives who have come from countries having active cases of coronavirus infection
- Avoid overcrowded places and gatherings
- Undertake air travel only if necessary
- Consider use of mask as necessary or as advised by public health authorities or your doctor
