DThe best advice is to have your loved ones in the same house or apartment before transferring your own Coronaviren to protect is: The sick person isolates himself in a room and pays attention to distance and mask if you have to meet. But what regarding following that, when he or she has recovered?
Many report the urge to scrub the whole house from top to bottom and disinfect all surfaces following a Covid-19 infection. What do experts think of this?
Opinions differ
the Federal Center for Health Education (BZgA) advises cleaning frequently touched surfaces such as light switches, door handles, bathroom and toilet surfaces or even smartphones with a household cleaning agent every day.
According to the BZgA, the corona virus is mainly transmitted via the air. But virus-containing particles that we release when we cough, sneeze or speak can stick to surfaces – especially in the immediate vicinity of a sick person.
Peter Walger from the board of the German Society for Hospital Hygiene assesses this danger somewhat differently. In his opinion, it is “absolutely superfluous” to scrub the whole house from top to bottom and disinfect all surfaces following a Covid 19 infection. “Infections are not transmitted in this way,” says the specialist in internal medicine, intensive care medicine and infectiology.
“The transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is essentially through breathing,” explains the hospital hygienist. “The entry point of the virus is the mouth, nose and throat. And we have virtually no evidence that there is a relevant indirect transmission route via inanimate surfaces.”
You would have to touch someone else’s nasal mucus
An exception is when you reach into so-called respiratory secretions. “So if someone coughs, put your hands on what you coughed up and then touch your own mucous membranes in the mouth, nose and throat area with your hands,” explains Walger. “But when do you ever touch someone else’s visibly coughed and spat? You don’t actually do that for aesthetic reasons.” And if you’re not sure: washing your hands with soap and water helps.
Families with very small children will raise their hands at this point: Babies and toddlers drool and cannot blow their noses on their own. But here, too, Walger does not recommend any special precautionary measures other than washing hands more frequently. As usual, you should keep your distance during an infection and if this is not possible, wear a mask as an adult and wash your hands more often.
Disinfectants are usually not necessary
Even in the bathroom, the risk of infection is limited – at least if you use the sinks one following the other during an infection in the household. “And if you wash away everything and clean normally where you wash and spit the contents of your nose in,” says Walger.
The senior physician at the Johanniter clinics in Bonn and in the association of Catholic hospitals in Düsseldorf adds: “There is not even a reason to use surface disinfection here.” The two expert sides agree on this, and the Federal Center for Health Education does not usually recommend disinfecting door handles, light switches, toilet seats and all other surfaces in the house.
Excluded are individual cases, for example to protect particularly vulnerable people. And then it would have to be a special product that bears designations such as “limited virucidal”, “limited virucidal PLUS” or “virucidal”.
The experts’ assessments of bed linen, which gets sweat and saliva on at night, differ once more. For Walger, no special hygienic treatment is necessary during and following an infection.
The Federal Center for Health Education recommends collecting the laundry of a sick person in a separate laundry bag, not touching them directly and not shaking them. Towels and bed linen should be washed at at least 60 degrees with heavy-duty detergent and dried thoroughly.
