There is no related documentation of cases for the risk of transmission of novel coronavirus through clothes and shoes. If one is taking care in close proximity of COVID-19, doing laundry is an important part of personal preventive hygiene. This include risks to health workers as most of the detergents are sufficient enough to kill the virus while laundry.
If you are best at self-quarantine situation in keeping yourself safe, then how would you restrict SARS-COV- 2, from getting in?
You are just making an essential trips to groceries, going out by practicing social-distancing. You also wash your hands frequently and disinfect the “high-contact” surfaces like the countertops and the doorknobs, when you get at home. But, there is a feeling of nag that even you are maintaining a good hygiene, you are worried about the things which you have brought home with you. There is a question in your mind that “are the groceries safe”? What about your shoes and clothes?
It is an inevitable truth that clothes and shoes must be taken care off while shopping.
Clothes at Low Risks:
There is a lot of things which we don’t know about this pandemic coronavirus and day-by-day we are learning more about it. If you are having a quick visit to grocery store, it is highly unlikely that you will be getting infected by the COVID-19 via your shoes and clothes. Clothes and shoes are not a significant source of transmission of COVID-19, by “Dr. Vincent Hsu”, MPH, a certified board of internal medicine, infectious disease, and the preventive physician at AdventHealth in Orlando. According to Hsu, there has no documentation of this pandemic which has been transmitted through clothes and shoes.
COVID-19, is a respiratory illness is spread by the respiratory droplets in the form of sneezing and coughing. It is a kind of direct transmission of the disease and most of the death tolls recorded in the extreme is by direct transmission.
Extra Precaution with Clothes:
The average visit to grocery stalls should not necessitate doing the laundry of your clothes, if you are following the preventive measures by keeping social-distancing. But the situation can become worse if someone has sneezed or coughed in your direct vicinity, then washing the clothes would be a great idea. But in general, one should take care on the other areas of hygiene that is keeping your hands clean by washing at certain intervals and not touching your face and nose will be more effective than laundry.
What About the Shoes we Wear?
Shoes by their nature are dirtier than clothes and are more likely to carry the bacteria with them. Most of the health workers agree that the shoes are unlikely source of transmission of the disease. What we do is actually protective. We keep our shoes outside and we don’t put our socks to the kitchen shelf or drawer. Shoes are also very far away to get touches by our mouth or nose.
But you can take an additional measures of safety by keeping your shoes clean, by disinfecting the areas safely away from the social areas and out of the reach of kids. For latest updates, stay tuned.
