Avoid colds and flus by not touching your face

Laidback Al · Dec 4, 2012

Avoid colds and flus by not touching your face

Posted: Dec 4, 2012 12:45 PM ET

Cursing your sick colleague for the infection you can feel settling into your chest? It's entirely possible you may have infected yourself with whatever respiratory bug has latched onto your lungs. . . . people sometimes self-inoculate. . . .In a nutshell, they stick germ-coated fingers into their mouths, they rub their eyes, they are even known to poke a finger into a nostril.

. . . a group of researchers suggests there's a part of the prevention equation that public health folks don't stress often enough: If you kept your fingers out of your mouth-nose-eyes, you'd lower your risk of self-inoculating.

"People touch their faces, touch their mouths, pick their noses and all of that. And in those behaviours they can bring these viruses that are on their hands to the muscosa ? where they can really infect us," says Wladimir Alonso, an infectious diseases researcher at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's Fogarty International Center.
Alonso and some colleagues wrote a letter to the Journal of Infectious Diseases recently to make the point. . . .

more at: http://www.cbc.ca/m/rich/health/story/2012/12/04/cold-flu-face.html

link to original correspondence -

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mixin · Dec 5, 2012

Re: Avoid colds and flus by not touching your face

There must be studies or the WHO wouldn't put out this info:

http://www.euro.who.int/en/what-we-.../facts-and-figures/how-do-you-catch-influenza

...

In most cases, the influenza virus is transmitted from infected people coughing and sneezing. Droplets can settle on the mucosal surfaces of the upper respiratory tracts of susceptible people nearby (close contact, as defined by WHO, is about 1 m). Transmission may also occur by direct contact, such as skin-to-skin, or by indirect contact with respiratory secretions, as when touching surfaces contaminated with influenza virus and then touching the eyes, nose or mouth.

Or this:
Sept. 18, 2009
Study: Being Coughed On, Unwashed Hands Most Reliable Ways to Get Flu
...
Coughing into someone's face = 50% chance of infection
Touching contaminated surface, then touching eyes, etc = 31% chance
Breathing tiny particles = 17% chance
Breathing large particles = 0.5% chance

"As a result, we conclude that nonpharmaceutical interventions [to prevent infection with] a pandemic virus must account for all routes of exposure," Nicas and Jones note in their report, published in the September issue of Risk Analysis.
...
http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20090918/2-easiest-ways-to-catch-swine-flu

gsgs · Dec 5, 2012

Re: Avoid colds and flus by not touching your face

consensus is, that most transmission is by droplets
then airborn, small particles that stay in the air

by contact has also happened but it's not the main route

and through mouth ? by eating ? I'm not aware of any example
except H5N1
by rubbing your eye - I haven't seen that either, although
they had conjunctivitis with H7N7 2003 in NL

poking the finger into nostrils, that could infect the mucosa in the last few
cm or by inhaling droplets that form.
But the hands would have to be contaminated before.
How ? Putting it into the mouth or nostril of another infected
person, that might work.

We had one longstanding study that said flu only survives ~5min on hands
while cold may survive many hours
------ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6282993 (from 1982)

> In a nutshell, they stick germ-coated fingers into their mouths,
> they rub their eyes, they are even known to poke a finger into a nostril.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjones25/
http://www.cdc.gov/influenzatransmi...fluenza_Transmission_Workshop_Summary_508.pdf

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searching Nicas , pubmed :

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2965740/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19558389

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18357546

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Emily · Dec 6, 2012

Re: Avoid colds and flus by not touching your face

Those are good references, gsgs, though it does sound like self-inoculation is an important way of getting the flu in crowds according to one of the articles:

Additionally, the self-inoculation rate was the most important behavioral parameter influencing contact-transmission (figure 4b). Thus, we have found specific features of the environment (host density), agent (infectivity) and host (susceptibility and self inoculation rate) that are important in determining transmission mode dominance.

Here's a post by Dr. Racaniello:
http://www.virology.ws/2009/04/29/influenza-virus-transmission/

Influenza virus transmission
By Vincent Racaniello
29 April 2009

[snip]
...An infected person will frequently touch their nose or conjunctiva, placing virus on the hand. Intimate or non-intimate contact (e.g. shaking hands) will transfer the virus to another person, who will then infect themselves by touching their nose or eyes. When contaminated hands touch other objects, the virus is transferred to them. In one study, 23-59% of objects from homes and day care facilities were shown to harbor influenza viral RNA. Others have shown that infectious influenza virus may be persist on paper currency for several weeks.

So if you can remember to not touch you face until after washing your hands, it seems like good advice overall.

gsgs · Dec 6, 2012

Re: Avoid colds and flus by not touching your face

thanks for checking. I didn't read the papers yet.
If contact transmission is so frequent, then why can't
flu survive summer

it isn't sufficient to place flu on the nose,eyes
it must also enter some cells with the right receptors etc.

you would assume that it's easy to demonstrate this
in ferrets or through questioning of people without
contacts (-->food,mail,) ...

sharon sanders · Jan 9, 2013

Re: Avoid colds and flus by not touching your face

bump this.

gsgs · Aug 12, 2013

Re: Avoid colds and flus by not touching your face

what's easier , washing hands or remembering to not touch
your face or shake hands for some minutes after exposure ?
E.g. when shopping, putting on/off a mask

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23927722
(H3N2) and A (H1N1)pdm09 viruses on human fingers. Infectious virus was easily
recoverable on all fingers 1 min after fingertip contamination but then decreased
very rapidly. After 30 min, infectious virus was detectable in only a small minority
of subjects. Infectious viruses were detected for a longer period of time when
droplets of larger size containing a higher number of particles were tested or
when the viral concentration increased.

gsgs · Sep 24, 2014

Re: Avoid colds and flus by not touching your face

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24955468
influenza A virus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and rhinovirus, in an aircraft cabin and in a hospital ward
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24760731
29% were PCR positive for human rhinovirus after sneeze or nose-pick in Bangladesh
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22412063
In this study, hand disinfection did not reduce RV infection or RV-related common cold illnesses
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22246844
Single treatment with ethanol hand rub is ineffective against human rhinovirus--hand washing with soap
and water removes the virus efficiently.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21412799
Infectious rhinovirus was detected on 22% of fingertips following contact with objects contaminated
for 1 hr; transfer dropped to 3% after 24 hr of contamination, and 0% after 48 hr.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20135827
About 20% of the objects in a pediatric office may be contaminated with respiratory viral RNA,
most commonly picornavirus RNA. Cleaning with a disinfectant cloth was only modestly
effective in removing the viral RNA from the surfaces of toys, but transfer of picornaviral RNA
from toys to fingers was inefficient.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25234544
4365 adults in Stockholm in 2009
RESULTS: There was no significant decrease in ARI rates among adults with increased daily
hand-washing frequency: Compared to 2-4 times/day, 5-9 times was associated with an
adjusted ARI rate ratio (RR) of 1.08 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.87-1.33), 10-19 times with
RR = 1.22 (CI 0.97-1.53), and >=20 times with RR = 1.03 (CI 0.81-1.32). A similar lack of
effect was seen for influenza-like illness, and in all investigated subgroups. We found no clear
effect modification by contact behaviour. Health care workers exhibited rate ratio point estimates
below unity, but no dose-risk trend.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Surface-dried viruses can resist glucoprotamin-based disinfection.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25117155
The provision of hand sanitiser in addition to usual hand hygiene in primary schools in
New Zealand did not prevent disease of severity sufficient to cause school absence.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24837113
CONCLUSION: School absenteeism [in Spain] because of infections in schools is reduced
when a hand hygiene program utilizing sanitizing gels is properly carried out, especially
during the flu season.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24679569
A H1N1sw virus particles remained infectious for 48 hours on a wooden surface, for 24 hours
on stainless steel and plastic surfaces, and for 8 hours on a cloth surface
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24572643
[metastudy] The combination of hand hygiene with facemasks was found to have statistically
significant efficacy against laboratory-confirmed influenza while hand hygiene alone did not.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Increased hand washing reduces influenza virus surface contamination in Bangkok households,
2009-2010.
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no statistically significant effect of school-based non-pharmaceutical interventions on transmission
in symptomatic children's homes. Pittsburg,2008
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recommended cough etiquette maneuvers did not block the release and dispersion of a variety
of different diameter droplets to the surrounding environment. Droplets smaller than one-micron
size dominate the total number of droplets leaked when practicing assessed maneuvers.
-------------------------
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23927722

Avoid colds and flus by not touching your face

Laidback Al

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