‘HYGIENE THEATER’
Officials say public can ease up on surface sanitizing
All that constant scrubbing, soaping and sanitizing?
It can stop now, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The federal agency has updated its coronavirus safety guidelines, recommending that cleaning once a day is usually enough to maintain a healthy site.
Routine use of disinfectants to fight COVID-19 is unnecessary when no people with confirmed or suspected cases are known to have been in a space, the agency says.
Public health experts welcomed the news, saying there is little evidence that contaminated surfaces spread the virus. A
much greater threat, they add, is the exhaled breath of infected people.
“This virus largely spreads through the air, not via surfaces,” tweeted Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
“Do basic hand hygiene, absolutely,” he said. “But focus on masks, ventilation and keeping air safe.”
Dr. Matt Willis, Marin County’s public health officer, said the new federal guidance prompted him to advise libraries that it is no longer necessary to set books aside after they are returned. At the beginning of the pandemic, he had recommended placing returned library material aside for a fourday “quarantine,” and in March he shortened it to
"We have to pick our battles, and the fact is, there’s a lot more yield focusing on respiratory transmission."
— Dr. Matt Willis, Marin County public health officer
“We should be always making sure that we’re really focusing our response on what the evidence is telling us,” Willis said. “We have to pick our battles, and the fact is, there’s a lot more yield focusing on respiratory transmission.”
For the Marin County Free Library, the looser rules will translate to a more efficient operation, said Raemona Little Taylor, deputy library director.
“Quarantine takes a lot of time,” she said. “That was slowing down the time it would take for the public to receive an item, but also for staff to process it. It created longer wait times.”
But the California Department of Public Health, which oversees the coronavirus safety protocols that businesses must follow in the state, has not updated its guidance to reflect the new federal changes, Willis said. That means Marin’s businesses are still advised to regularly disinfect hightouch surfaces.
The Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District is maintaining its pandemic cleaning protocols on buses and ferries, said Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz, a district spokesman.
Cleaning crews spray and wipe down ferries after each ride and do the same for buses at the end of each day, he said. Bus stations and ferry terminals also get regularly disinfected, he said.
“At the moment we don’t have any plans to change, but we’ll certainly be looking at the federal guidance,” Cosulich-Schwartz said.
For over a year, we’ve shared a collective sense of paranoia — dubbed “hygiene theater” — about touching ATMs, grocery bags and even the day’s delivered mail.
In shared public places, at great expense, workers diligently spray sanitizer, wipe down surfaces and take other precautions. By the end of 2020, global sales of surface disinfectant totaled $4.5 billion, a jump of more than 30% over the previous year, according to the journal Nature.
We’re also fastidious at home, scrubbing our hands like Lady Macbeth.
But as evidence has accumulated over the course
of the pandemic, our scientific understanding about transmission of the virus has changed. In July, a critique in the medical journal Lancet Infectious Diseases asserted that the risk of COVID-19 transmission by “fomites” — inanimate surfaces or objects — had been based on studies that bear little resemblance to real life.
To be sure, the virus that causes COVID-19 can land on surfaces, according to the CDC. It’s possible for people to become infected if they touch those surfaces and then touch their nose, mouth or eyes.
But in most situations, “the risk of infection from touching a surface is low,” it said.
There are exceptions, it adds. Frequent cleaning or disinfection is appropriate
in shared spaces if there are high rates of COVID-19 transmission in the community, if few people wear masks or clean their hands, or if the space is occupied by people who are at risk of severe disease if they got infected.
In that case, clean “high-touch” surfaces — pens, counters, shopping carts, tables, doorknobs, light switches, handles, stair rails, elevator buttons, desks, keyboards, phones, toilets, faucets and sinks — at least once a day, it advised.
“Infections are not primarily driven by droplets but by aerosols,” said Jha. “That has huge implications for how we keep people safe, especially in indoor settings.”