When it comes to keeping hands clean, washing them thoroughly in warm soapy water is more effective than hand sanitizer.
Why is soap and water, better than hand sanitizer?
Covid19 is protein with a fat coating on the outside. Think of that as a steak. It is also protein with fat. Now let’s compare two cases. You washing your dirty dish and washing your hands.
After you’ve eaten a lovely piece of cooked steak, the best way to clean your dirty plate ( your hands ) is to use some detergent (soap) that binds with the fatty, greasy dirt on your plate ( your hands ).
Then rubbing it helps to separate and lift the grease ( virus ) off the plate ( your hands ), the running water mixes with the soap bound to the greasy stuff ( virus ), and washes the lot off, resulting in a nice clean plate ( clean hands )!
Unfortunately using sanitizer hand gels doesn’t reliably kill all virus and certainly doesn’t remove all the particles from your hands. If you rub the sanitizer on your hands and then air dry, just like the greasy dinner plate, your hands are still dirty with bits of virus still there. You must wash it off to remove the particles from your hands, just like cleaning a plate!
(Image Credits: Thephamaletter, Freepik, istock/Gilaxia)