How Often Do You Need To Sanitize Your Hands?

How Often Do You Need To Sanitize Your Hands? It is advised for long, as a rule of hygiene, that everyone should wash his/her hands frequently by using water and soap and in between sanitize them by using sanitizer.

But it is not easy to answer the question of how often do you need to sanitize your hands as it depends on various factors including controlling the spread of illnesses, bacteria, and diseases, etc.

Frequency of sanitizing your hands

You can find many people obsessed with irrational hygienic mentality. They always carry an adequate stock of their bathroom products and hand sanitizers with them as if they have to sanitize the whole community along with their hands.

You can also find some parents who wipe down each and every surface around their children where they are playing or eating by using sanitizing wipes. These desperately protective parents usually ensure to sanitize not only their hands by also the playmates and toys of their children.

Some of the people go a step ahead during the season of flu and cold. They use sanitizer to wipe down their place to work on as well as to sanitize their hands after every 10-15 minutes. Some of them do not allow anyone to enter their room without sanitizing their hands.

In case of outbreak of certain epidemics and pandemics like COVID-19 etc. it is advised to sanitize your hands as well as your surroundings and common touchpoints like doorknobs and railings etc. very frequently.

They advise you to wash your hands at least for 20 seconds with soap and water every 30-45 minutes as well as when you come from outside. They also suggest keeping sanitizer containing over 60% alcohol with you so that you can sanitize your hands when soap and water are not available.

However, there are certain environments where sanitizing is very important even if you occasionally use sanitizer or habitual to use hand sanitizer to sanitize your hands frequently.

Some of the common things and places which are highly recommended to be sanitized may include restaurants and food services, sanatoriums, hospitals, offices of doctors, nursing homes, emergency rooms and rooms for urgent care, cruise ships, environments of shared offices, and co-working places, cashiers, casinos, and rooms with a clean environment, etc.

Reasons to sanitize your hands

The chances of the spread of bacteria and germs are very high in most of the environments discussed above. The risk of spreading bacteria and viruses increases because of touching a number of things touched by other people.

The risk of infection increases more aggressively, when you use your hands while sneezing or coughing. The germs and viruses on your hands by touching common touchpoints can enter into your body with your breath to infect you.

Moreover, if you are infected with some infectious diseases like COVID-19 then the droplets coming out with your cough or sneeze can infect your hands. When you will touch common touchpoints with your infected hands then it will help in spreading the infection of Coronavirus among the people touching those touchpoints.

For this reason, it is advised to sanitize your hands and surroundings regularly and frequently to avoid the spreading of the infectious disease of COVID-19.

The necessity of the sanitizing a clean room

A large number of people all over the world touch a large number of things in their day-to-day life. Some of them may touch their mouth while eating something, rub their eyes, brush their teeth, or blow their nose if they are not touching any other item.

Now when they will enter a room with a clean environment then they will touch various items and surface as well as shake hands with a number of other people in that room.

In such a situation, the germs and bacteria on their hand will be spread over there if they have not sanitized their hands before entering the room.

How Often Do You Need To Sanitize Your Hands? – Conclusion

Thus, the frequency of sanitizing hands depends upon various factors. Even if it is not easy to answer how often do you need to sanitize your hands still you can sanitize them at least after every hour, by using soap and water or a sanitizer, as a thumb rule of hygiene.