How to minimize the chances of contracting covid around the house: From proper ventilation, washing infected items, sanitizing surfaces along with practising good hygiene.
We are all concerned about letting covid-19 back into our lives, and if you want to reduce the risk of contracting the disease or its variants, then you need to start in your home. This is an environment you have control over, and there are many things you can do to minimize your chances of contracting covid.
You may not be able to control the environment outside of your home, but you can do a lot to keep your house clean, neat, and sanitized so that covid doesn’t strike there. We are going to share some measures you can take to put your mind at ease and make your home safer for you and your family.
Check Your Ventilation
How well-ventilated is your home? If there is poor airflow in the home, then it will be easy for any kind of allergens, microbes, and bacteria to stay in the home. Covid hates fresh air and has a hard time surviving in the outdoor environment. It does better inside a warm, moist body, and if your home mimics that kind of environment, then covid is more likely to hang out there and not go anywhere.
You need to get fresh air in your home and circulate the existing air as much as possible. This means opening doors and windows when you can and ensuring there is plenty of ventilation occurring in the air vents in your home. You may need to upgrade your home’s ventilation system to make the place safer for you and less inviting to covid. Also ensure that the air filter in your home is changed every few months. If it looks really dirty, it probably needs to be replaced.
Sanitize Surfaces People Touch
Which areas of the home do your hands come into contact with the most? Those are the areas you need to target with sanitizer. Don’t stop at sanitizing your hands but also include touchable surfaces like doorknobs, kitchen counters, handles, and tables in your sanitizing efforts.
Use a powerful sanitizer that is tough on germs (and covid) and gentle on your skin, sinuses, and your pets. If the sanitizer is so powerful that it irritates you, it may be best to find an alternative.
How often should you sanitize these surfaces? It is best to sanitize them after every use, but if you can just clean them once a day, that will make a big impact too. Any kind of regular cleaning will help. Your home benefits from frequent cleaning, since this cuts down on dust, bacteria, allergens, mold, and viruses. Many home cleaning chemicals will kill germs on contact, making every surface safer for anyone living there and especially for small children who tend to touch everything.
Consider having professional cleaning services come to your home every so often to do a thorough job of killing germs and making the place safe from bacteria and viruses.
Wash Infected Items
If someone enters your home and exhibits signs of covid, like sneezing, coughing, or a runny nose, then you should clean any surfaces they came into contact with. Even clean items that their clothes touched. So, if they sat down on the couch, you should clean the fabric to eliminate germs. Use a fabric safe cleaner that kills microbial life. If possible, remove the cover for anything they came into contact with and run that through a hot washing cycle.
Hot water is really good at killing germs, and you want to use the hot water cycle for washing clothes that an infected person wore. If a family member is sick with covid, or you suspect they might be, then you can wash their clothes this way and kill many of the germs so that the virus doesn’t spread so easily.
Keep in mind that covid cannot survive on inorganic matter for more than a few hours in most conditions. You don’t have to toss out most things that came into contact with an infected person. Just quarantine the items like you would the person or clean the items with something that will kill germs.
Treat Every Person as Potentially Infected
Keeping your home safe from covid is about more than just cleaning any furniture, clothing, or hard surface that may have germs on it. You also need to be careful about who you let into your home. This is true even of family members.
If they exhibit signs of a covid infection, you should take that seriously and consider having them quarantined outside of your home. There is some indication that covid can spread through close airspace, and your home is safer for covid particles than outside. You have to take every possible precaution.
Before letting anyone into your home, ask them about how they feel and whether they are showing any symptoms. Also ask about their contact with other people who showed signs of covid. Anyone who is demonstrating covid symptoms should go for testing immediately. This will help to ease your fears and keep you from being concerned unnecessarily. Many illnesses have similar symptoms to covid-19 and its variants, so it is best to be sure rather than to take a chance.
Practice Good Hygiene
The final piece of advice we want to give you is personal to you and to anyone who lives in your home with you. It is vital that you all practice good hygiene. This means washing hands regularly, using soap and warm running water. It also means taking regular showers and wearing clean clothes each day. It means covering your mouth with your sleeve if you sneeze or cough. This reduces the spread of germs into the air.
Good hygiene will protect other people from you if you have covid. It will also go a long way toward keeping you from catching covid from others. These are just some basic guidelines to help you out and to keep your home safe. If you put them into practice, you can have a sanitary home that is very likely to be covid free.
