How Soap or Alcohol Based Hand Sanitizers Can Eliminate Corona Virus

Corona virus outbreak has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. Covid-19 cases have been steeply going up all over the world including the US. As an anxiety wave is sweeping the country, there’s one consumer product that can be critical in the battle against the virus.  It is Hand Sanitizers!

Alcohol based hand sanitizers make a great way to stay germ free especially on the go when you have no access to soap and water.

Using a hand sanitizer with at least 62% alcohol can reduce the growth to acceptable safety limits and prevent it from spreading, However, you may need sanitizers with 70% alcohol to completely kills the germs.

Knowing more about the virus and its composition will go a long way in our battle against this deadly virus.

Why is it named corona virus

The name is derived from the Latin word corona, meaning “crown” or “wreath”, which refers to the spiked protein projections over the surface of the virus that resembles the corona of the sun.

History

Covid 19 belongs to the family of coronaviruses, the same family responsible for diseases SARS, MERS or even some strains of common cold or flu- all of which affects the respiratory system of humans causing cough, fever and   breathlessness. It can even affect animals and birds.

Coronaviruses were discovered in the 1960s for the first time. It was named as human coronavirus 229E and human coronavirus OC43 among various other strains including  the recent MERS-CoV in 2012, and SARS-CoV-2  in 2019 and now COVID -19, which was first reported in an animal market in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Most of these virus infections involve serious respiratory tract and lung infections.

How Hand Sanitizers Act?

Hand sanitizers contain ethyl alcohol, isopropyl alcohol or both, that can kill bacteria and viruses on your hands.  Alcohols kill germs by denaturing the protective outer proteins of microbes and dissolving their membranes.

It is recommended to use sanitizers with minimum 62% alcohol. The more the alcohol content the more will be the effect.  Make sure that your hands are dry before applying sanitizers as its effect will be less on wet, sweaty or greasy hands.

Make sure to spend at least 20 seconds to wash your hands. Give time for the sanitizers to penetrate the tiny folds of the skin so that it can destroy all the viruses that lurk within.

Soap and water can keep germs away

Sanitizers might feel like a modern-day, clinical upgrade to soap. However, even now, washing hands with soap and water for atleast 20 seconds is a proven way to wipe viruses off your hands and send them down the drain!

However, it may not be feasible for people on the move or  where they may not have access to running water and soap to keep themselves sanitized. This gives hand sanitizers an upper hand  as it suits the modern life style of people and meets the challenges that come with it.

How soap wages a winning battle against germs!

Soap molecules have a dual nature- One end of the molecule is attracted to water and repelled by fats and proteins while the other end acts just the reverse- it attracts fats and repels water!

It’s this amazing dual-nature chemical construction that makes soap so effective.  It will annihilate the germs without damaging your hands. Just like soap remove oil and dirt from clothes and make it disperse quite effectively, it will tear up fat and protein that surrounds the Corona virus to annihilate it. Anything greasy no matter in microscopic quantity is just the type of thing soap loves to wipe out!

Soap can pull the virus apart, by getting the fatty outer coat dissolved and make it soluble in water! One side of the soap molecule buries into the fat shell of the virus and will break the coat. After which it will be pulled down to the water by the other end of the soap molecule to make it disintegrate.

It is relieving to note that washing hands with soap and water and sanitizing will make the biggest shield against the virus threat.

Give utmost importance to personal hygiene and social etiquette while in groups to halt the spread of this deadly virus. Let us all come together to make it happen! Together we can do!