Hello everyone!
We’re all washing our hands, staying 6 feet away from people, avoiding crowded places but how do we avoid bringing the virus home?
I share my home with a man who was NY State EMT while on the NYPD Elite Scuba Team and was a trained Hazmat tech Level A which is the highest cert with SCBA (self-contained breathing apparatus). So last Friday, he established a coming home sanitizing protocol we both committed to enforce.
When we walk in the door knowing we were in contact with possible contaminated surfaces in public, we follow the steps below but you should have at least washed hands or used hand sanitizer before heading home.
We have UV phone cleaner (“phone soap”) and spray bottle with 71% alcohol positioned right near the front door of our home.
- Place phone in phone cleaner or wipe down phone w/ alcohol solution (do not spray phone. It will damage it). Put keys, wallet, credit cards that were used in here too if possible.
- Wash hands and wrists 30sec
- Spray both door knobs w/ alcohol
- Spray anything you brought home. Backpack, purse grocery bags, delivery boxes
- Disinfect contents of delivery boxes or grocery bags if possible. This virus lives on hard surfaces for days (up to 9 on stainless steel) so spray or wash things like canned food, jars etc. You don’t know how many people touched that jar before you bought it.
- Wipe down phone cleaner before you open it and wash hands again.
We’ve even taken the step of avoiding raw foods like lettuce or salads. There is no data on how long it can live on say a cucumber that someone touched. Will rinsing produce with water kill it or the cold of the fridge? We don’t know. So we’re only buying foods we can cook.
I know this sounds like overkill but it’s really not, especially if you are in the high risk category. It’s very easy to recontaminate yourself after you’ve washed your hands. Like forgetting that you opened/closed the phone cleaner with dirty hands to place your dirty phone inside. The outside of that case now has virus on it.
Shane was highly trained to deal with terrorist attacks using biological weapons. One mistake in the hot zone and he would be dead. This isn’t quite like that but the same principles can be applied. We have to constantly think about what we have touched and what a possible infected person has touched. Assume everyone is carrying it.
Stay safe out there everyone,
Love,
Emma
