Took my car to the workshop this week and the manager beckoned me into his office. “Hold out your hands,” he said, and then squirted them with a big bottle of hand sanitizer.
I was quite tickled. I think of workshops as dirty, and there he was cleaning hands of customers. Shows how the coronavirus protection message is getting across to people. It is good to know that you can kill COVID-19 – the virus responsible for the coronavirus pandemic – on your hands by simply washing them with ordinary soap and water for 20 seconds, and doing so frequently. As the daughter of a GP, I had hand washing drummed into me from childhood, and always do so the minute I arrive home. The experts say it is also important not to touch your face because if your hands are contaminated, you can transmit a virus into your body by touching your eyes, nose or mouth. I am far less good about not touching my face. I often rub my eyes or mouth when I am thinking, a habit hard to break, but I must. I know this is gross, but at least I do not wipe away my snot with my fingers. Yuk! So many people do. And pick their noses. If they are carrying a virus, the virus is then on their fingers, and they transmit the bugs to whatever surface they touch. I watch them and think: “OK, where are you going to put those snotty fingers now? On the office door handle? The lift button? The supermarket trolley? The tap? ATM? Card machine?” And here is a scary thing: The World Health Organisation (WHO) says studies suggest that coronaviruses can stay alive on surfaces for a few hours to three days! What worries me is the droplet infection. Coughing and sneezing sprays spit quite far, and with it any bugs the person may have, but have you ever watched someone simply talking with the sunlight behind him, and seen how much spit is sprayed out of a person’s mouth? That is why experts advise us to keep our “social distance” by standing a metre away from a person. Have your tried it? Not so easy because often as I step back, they step towards me. If anyone was not aware of the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s move on Sunday to declare the outbreak a national disaster will have brought it home to people. It does make me feel a bit anxious, but one thing I find helps is to ignore anything about the virus on social media unless it comes from a reputable source like the WHO, universities, relevant government departments etc. António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, made a statement that perked me up a little this week: “The spread of the virus will peak. Our economies will recover. Until then, we must act together to slow the spread of the virus and look after each other. This is a time for prudence, not panic. Science, not stigma. Facts not fear.” As they say: Spread the message, not the virus.
