All you need to use to combat Coronavirus is a 39p bleach from Tesco
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THERE’S one question on everyone’s lips at the moment – how to avoid Coronavirus.
So, let’s assume that you’re washing your hands compulsively (anyone else bored of Happy Birthday, yet?) and basically slathering yourself from fingertip to elbow in alcohol-based hand sanitiser when there’s no sink around, but what can you do to keep your home safe.
“Most of us haven’t got Coronavirus in our homes,” explains Professor Sally Bloomfield of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “It doesn’t just appear! It won’t be in your home until someone brings it in.
“The same simple things that help prevent the spread of colds and flu will also help prevent the spread of Coronavirus, in situations where someone in the home is infected, or thought to be infected.”
Washing your hands as soon as you get home is the singular best advice given, with the government also saying we should be cleaning and disinfecting objects we touch regularly to minimise the risk of passing anything on.
But what to use for this cleaning? According to Professor Bloomfield there’s no need to shop for a Mrs Hinch-style haul, as the answer is incredibly simple.
- Tesco Thick Bleach, 39p for 750ml -
So here’s your action plan - what you need to clean, when you need to clean it, and how you need to clean it…
Bleach is best
There are huge numbers of cleaning products out there but actually, the best ones for killing viruses are alcohol and bleach.
If you’re looking for an alcohol-based hand sanitiser, you want one that contains somewhere between 62 per cent and 80 per cent alcohol. Anything less and it’s less likely to be effective.
And as for bleach, you need something that has a concentration of around 0.5 per cent.
To give you an idea, household bleach (both thick and thin bleach) for domestic typically has a concentration of 4.5 to 5 per cent, while bleach-based wipes and sprays tend to have been diluted and are already at around 0.5 per cent.
This means something like Tesco Thick Bleach, 39p for 750ml, is all you really need to use. To use, dilute as per the instructions on the bottle – this will still mean the concentration is at the 0.5 per cent you need.
“It can be very difficult to find out the concentrations of ingredients in cleaning products, and how effective they are” says Professor Bloomfield, who is also a member of the (IFH).
“For that reason, I stick to using bleach and alcohol, as there are lots of publications proving how effective they are against viruses like Coronavirus.”So how do bleach and alcohol actually work against Coronavirus?
First up, ignore all the smart alecs telling you that alcohol-based anti-bacterial gel won’t work on a virus as it only works on bacteria, they’re wrong.
“Alcohol works against the virus by dissolving its coating — without that, it can’t function,” says Professor Bloomfield.
“Bleach generally breaks down most of the biological structures that make up the virus and so kills it very rapidly.”
Detergents and soap don’t kill microbes, they just loosen them from the surface. So to decontaminate a surface, you need to rinse it under clean running water once you’ve loosened the microbes.
Professor Bloomfield
Both alcohol and bleach can be effective in around 15 to 30 seconds, so you don’t have to leave them on for hours on end.
Careful with the cloths
Cleaning cloths and sponges can readily spread viruses from one surface to another — you don’t want to wipe it off one surface and onto other.
The IFH recommend using disposable cloths or wipes, or making sure that cloths are disinfected immediately after use using a bleach disinfectant or other disinfectant that kills viruses.
Turn up the temperature on your laundry
It goes without saying that it’s good hygiene not to share towels or facecloths anyway.
But if someone in your family has become ill, or thinks they have, make sure that their laundry is washed separately from other laundry, and at a higher temperature (at least 60ºC) to ensure viruses are inactivated.
The difference between cleaning and disinfecting
“Detergents and soap don’t kill microbes, they just loosen them from the surface,” explains Professor Bloomfield.
“So to decontaminate a surface, you need to rinse it under clean running water once you’ve loosened the microbes.”
That's why after soaping your hands, you have to rinse them under the tap. Of course that’s great if the surface is your hands, less great if it’s the TV remote.
And that’s where wiping with bleach or disinfectants come into play.
The surfaces you need to clean
It’s all about targeted hygiene, identifying the ways that any virus is most likely to spread.
“Areas like computer keyboards, TV remotes, telephones, door handles, light switches, taps, toilet seats and flush handles are the most likely culprits,” says Professor Bloomfield, because they are touched so much.
Cleaning these areas effectively will give you about 90 per cent protection.
“People are scared that dirt is where germs lurk,” she says. “But how clean your floor is won’t contribute much to protecting you from Coronavirus.”
It’s not breeding
The good news is coronavirus doesn’t breed outside the human body.
If it’s on a surface, it’s just sitting there hoping to find a new person to infect.
According to the government, while some research has suggested that certain types of coronaviruses can live for up to nine days, “studies of SARS and MERS suggest that, in most circumstances, the risk is likely to be reduced significantly after 72 hours.”
Want to know more? The about how protect yourself from infection and avoid it spreading.
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