Getting through the flu season safely
Malsfeld, Germany – One thing is certain when your child comes home from kindergarten with a nasty cold, flu medication ads are everywhere, and you find yourself filling in for an ill colleague at work: the flu season has arrived. While both the WHO and the Robert Koch Institute consider flu vaccination to be among the most important protective measures, Dr. Schumacher GmbH also recommends that hands and everyday contact surfaces be disinfected in a targeted and systematic manner.
What actually causes these flu outbreaks to occur mainly during the winter months? The main reason is that influenza viruses are more stable at low humidity and low temperatures. There are also negative contributing factors, such as how we humans spend less time outdoors during the cold winter months and more time in enclosed spaces with other people. We also ventilate our indoor environments considerably less than in summer, spring and autumn. These things create hospitable conditions for viruses. Moreover, as the number of infected people increases, more of them will gather in public spaces, thereby promoting the spread of viruses even further. It is therefore all the more important to sensitize people to these factors, to inform them about effective preventive measures and, last but not least, to provide them with safe and user-friendly products.
Five simple tips for reducing the risk of infection during the winter months
1) Frequent hand washing or straightforward disinfection? Although hand washing should be the primary measure in your home environment, it is not sufficient during flu outbreaks. Researchers and hygiene experts alike therefore recommend that you disinfect your hands regularly and in a targeted manner, for example after contact with infected persons.
And don’t forget that the process of disinfecting your hands with a product that is virucidal against enveloped viruses should take at least 30 seconds.
2) You should always disinfect your hands after you have been exposed to a public environment. This includes, for example, buses, trains, grocery stores or other areas where many people gather. The risk of infection increases whenever you touch a surface that has likely already been touched by many others. Disinfecting your hands immediately afterwards lowers the likelihood of infection.
3) If you visit others who are ill or inadvertently come into contact with infected persons, you should disinfect your hands immediately afterwards. Otherwise you will promptly become a transmitter of the pathogens, thereby infecting others besides yourself.
4) In addition to effective hand disinfection, surface disinfection is very important. Depending on the environment and surface’s composition and texture, viruses can persist on a surface for up to a week. So if you are unsure about whether an infected person might have contaminated a surface, you should disinfect it thoroughly.
5) Effective disinfection against viruses that are more prevalent during the flu season requires using disinfectants that contain at least virucidal agents that are effective against enveloped viruses, such as the influenza virus, and have been shown to help reduce the risk of infection during a flu outbreak.
Dr. Schumacher GmbH recommends hand disinfectants from its own extensive range for your facility. They offer a variety of efficacy spectra that meet a wide array of everyday work environment needs, in both medical and non-medical settings. Dr. Schumacher hand disinfectants are also particularly gentle to the skin.
Click here to access the Dr. Schumacher hand disinfectants: https://www.schumacher-online.com/en/disinfection-hygiene/product-list/hand-disinfection/