174 years ago in the
city of Vienna, a young Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis
stumbled across a link between pathogens on the hand and the spread of
communicable diseases. His solution – a mix of hand washing and
instrument sterilization between seeing patients - cut his hospital’s
childbed fever rate to below 1 percent and would someday become the
basis of a fight against a deadly viral pandemic ravaging the world.
Beyond the medical
profession, this newfound consciousness about the link between hand
hygiene and communicable diseases also fueled the development and
widespread use of antibacterial and antiseptic products such as Dettol.
Hand washing, a relatively low-tech medical solution has saved countless
lives over the past two centuries, but now in the era of the SARS COV-2
novel coronavirus (COVID-19), its importance is even more pronounced.
The Science of Hand washing
To understand the
true significance of what hand washing does in the context of the
ongoing fight against COVID-19, it is important to note that our hands
serve as a very effective medium for the transport and transfer of
microbes from one person to another. The average human skin/ hand
contains about 1500 germs/ each square centimeter of our hands, with the
total microbial load in the hands alone estimated to be about 2-10
million in some people! These germs are divided into resident/
non-harmful germs and transient/ harmful germs.
The resident germs
are often difficult to wash off, and help the body with many helpful
activities and also help to fight off the harmful germs. On the other
hand, the transient (non-resident) germs, which may survive on the hands
for between 1-3 hours, can easily be transferred from one person to
another through contact.
Hand washing with soap movement physically
evicts pathogens from the skin surfaces on your hands, which prevents
you from transferring them elsewhere. Needless to say, our hands are the
parts of our bodies that most come into contact with foreign surfaces
and skins. This makes the physical removal of microbes from them
particularly important since the COVID-19 virus is said to remain active
on surfaces for up to 28 days.
According to Dr.
Sallie Permar, an infectious disease researcher at Duke University, soap
can also physically disarm the COVID-19 virus by attacking the
“envelope” - a layer surrounding the virus that helps them bind on to
and invade new cells. Both the virus envelope and the soap molecules
have fatty substances that interact with each other and disrupt the
envelope, effectively immobilizing the virus and making it unable to
infect human cells.
It is important to
note that while ethyl alcohol-based hand sanitizers have a similar
effect on pathogens like COVID-19, they are not to be considered as a
substitute for handwashing. Speaking to the Smithsonian Magazine
recently, Chidiebere Akusobi, a Nigerian born infectious disease
researcher at Harvard’s School of Public Health explained that while
hand sanitizers do kill microbes, they do not physically evict them from
skin surfaces, unlike soap which is specifically designed to lift oily
dirt off surfaces. In his words:
“Soap emulsifies
things like dirt well. When you have a dirty plate, you don’t want to
use alcohol—that would help sterilize it, but not clean it.”
The Enhanced Importance of Handwashing in the Coronavirus Era
According to a 2008
American study, the simple act of washing hands after coming into
contact with other people and unsterilised surfaces can reduce the risk
of contracting a respiratory infection like the coronavirus by up to 21
per cent. Statistically, washing our hands with soap and obeying
physical distancing guidelines will do more to slow the spread of the
virus than any other solution apart from a vaccine.
The COVID-19
pathogen reportedly has the ability to stay alive on surfaces for up to
28 days. This means that objects and surfaces that several people touch
regularly such as work surfaces, door handles and hands can become
excellent vectors for delivering the virus to new hosts. This is a
particularly great risk because patients are known to be infectious even
when the disease is still in its pre-symptomatic stage which lasts up
to 14 days in most cases.
Washing hands, as seen above will destroy and evict the pathogens from the skin’s surface. More importantly, washing hands regularly will
reduce the risk of transmission by getting rid of the virus soon after
an individual touches a surface where it is present. Without this
measure, the virus would spread very easily, especially among people in
close physical contact such as families. It is fair to say that regular
hand washing is the single biggest weapon we have against the
coronavirus in the absence of a vaccine, which is still at least a year
away.
In the meantime, the
simple act of washing hands and implementing social distancing
recommendations may be all it takes to keep our families safe from
COVID-19.
For accurate and up-to-date advice, please visit www.covid19.ncdc.gov.ng or check out www.covid-19facts.com You can also call the NCDC Toll free number 08009700010
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