Also: Learn strategies for using a public bathroom during the pandemic. Plus, how to take care of a tick bite,

It can feel as though you’re running an infectious gantlet when using a public bathroom, especially following news of toilet plume, that cloud of aerosol droplets that can rise nearly 3 feet and linger long enough to be inhaled by the toilet’s next user or land on other surfaces of the bathroom. And, in a way, you are.

So what to do, especially now that many of us are starting to leave home a little more?

In general, contact with contaminated surfaces is not believed to be a primary method of coronavirus infection, but this is still understudied. While shared bathrooms can increase the spread of gastrointestinal infections, we don’t know how bathrooms play a role in the transmission of a respiratory virus, like the coronavirus, that has also been identified in stool.

We also don’t know the risk — if any — posed by coronavirus aerosols in the toilet plume, so admittedly there are a lot of unknowns.

What we do know is that there are certain bathroom behaviors that will help protect you from many nefarious microbes.

Checklist for shared bathroom use

The best defenses against bathroom contagions are a mask, social distancing, limiting the surfaces you touch with your hands and hand hygiene.

■ Consider larger bathrooms with multiple stalls because they have more air circulation.

■ If someone exits a bathroom stall or a single bathroom right before you, try waiting at least 60 seconds before entering — especially if the toilet seat lid is up, signifying more plume.

■ Skip the paper toilet seat covers. They are likely placebo — we have no idea if they offer protection from bacteria or viruses — and they could easily be contaminated with toilet plume, so touching them with your hands could be a source of infectious transmission.

■ If you need to dispose of a menstrual product in one of those little containers, touch the lid with a wad of toilet paper and sanitize your hands after. Those lids are among the worst surfaces in the bathroom stall: touched by many unwashed hands and showered with infectious plume.

■ If the toilet has a lid, close it before you flush so it traps the plume. Think of the lid as a mask for the toilet.

■ If an automated toilet is flushing, step back because those things spray.

■ How you dry your hands after washing probably doesn’t matter; paper towels or dryers are likely equal. But do avoid shared, reusable hand towels.

■ Get out of there quickly. Chatting in bathrooms is the new smoking in bathrooms — it’s a relic of the past. If you have to open a door to exit, use hand sanitizer after you leave.

CLAIRE MILBRATH / NYT It might seem surprising, but experts say skip covering a public toilet seat with paper. Science hasn’t proved it helps.