Respiratory viruses like coronavirus disease (COVID-19) spread when mucus or droplets containing the virus get into your body through your eyes, nose or throat. Most often, this happens through your hands. Hands are also one of the most common ways that the virus spreads from one person to the next.

During a global pandemic, one of the cheapest, easiest, and most important ways to prevent the spread of a virus is to wash your hands frequently with soap and water.

Here’s everything you need to know about how to wash your hands the right way:

To eliminate all traces of the virus on your hands, a quick scrub and a rinse won’t cut it. Below is a step-by-step process for effective handwashing.

• Step 1: Wet hands with running water
• Step 2: Apply enough soap to cover wet hands
• Step 3: Scrub all surfaces of the hands – including back of hands, between fingers and under nails – for at least 20 seconds.
• Step 4: Rinse thoroughly with running water
• Step 5: Dry hands with a clean cloth or single-use towel

You should wash your hands for at least 20-30 seconds. An easy way to time it is by singing the full happy birthday song, twice.

The same goes for hand sanitizer: use a sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol and rub it into your hands for at least 20 seconds to ensure full coverage.

When should I wash my hands?

In the context of COVID-19 prevention, you should make sure to wash your hands at the following times:

• After blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing
• After visiting a public space, including public transportation, markets and places of worship
• After touching surfaces outside of the home, including money
• Before, during and after caring for a sick person
• Before and after eating

In general, you should always wash your hands at the following times:

• After using the toilet
• Before and after eating
• After handling garbage
• After touching animals and pets
• After changing babies’ diapers or helping children use the toilet
• When your hands are visibly dirty 

Which is better: washing your hands or using hand sanitizer?

In general, both handwashing with soap and water and hand sanitizer, when practiced/used correctly, are highly effective at killing most germs and pathogens. Hand sanitizer is often more convenient when you are outside of the home, but can be expensive or difficult to find in emergency contexts. Also, alcohol-based hand sanitizer kills the coronavirus, but it does not kill all kinds of bacteria and viruses.

For more information on how to protect yourself, click here.

You can also see how we are helping our communities during the pandemic, and how you can also help by clicking here.