Wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water

• especially after using the toilet or changing diapers
• always before eating, preparing, or handling food, and
• before giving yourself or someone else medicine.

Norovirus can be found in your vomit or poop even before you start feeling sick. The virus can stay in your poop for 2 weeks or more after you feel better. It is important to continue washing your hands often during this time.

You can use alcohol-based hand sanitizers in addition to hand washing. But, you should not use hand sanitizer as a substitute for washing your hands with soap and water. Hand sanitizers aren’t as effective as washing hands with soap and water at removing norovirus particles.

Handle and prepare food safely

Carefully wash fruits and vegetables before preparing and eating them. Cook oysters and other shellfish thoroughly before eating them.

Be aware that noroviruses are relatively resistant to heat. They can survive temperatures as high as 145°F and quick steaming processes that are often used for cooking shellfish.

Food that might be contaminated with norovirus should be thrown out.

Keep sick infants and children out of areas where food is being handled and prepared.

When you are sick, do not prepare food or care for others

You should not prepare food for others or provide healthcare while you are sick and for at least 2 days after symptoms stop. This also applies to sick workers in restaurants, schools, daycares, long-term care facilities, and other places where they may expose people to norovirus.

Clean and disinfect surfaces

After someone vomits or has diarrhea, always thoroughly clean and disinfect the entire area immediately. Put on rubber or disposable gloves, and wipe the entire area with paper towels, then disinfect the area using a bleach-based household cleaner as directed on the product label. Leave the bleach disinfectant on the affected area for at least five minutes then clean the entire area again with soap and hot water. Finish by cleaning soiled laundry, taking out the trash, and washing your hands.

To help make sure that food is safe from norovirus, routinely clean and sanitize kitchen utensils, counters, and surfaces before preparing food.

You should use a chlorine bleach solution with a concentration of 1000 to 5000 ppm (5 to 25 tablespoons of household bleach [5% to 8%] per gallon of water) or other disinfectant registered as effective against norovirus by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Wash laundry thoroughly

Immediately remove and wash clothes or linens that may be contaminated with vomit or poop.

You should:

• handle soiled items carefully without agitating them,
• wear rubber or disposable gloves while handling soiled items and wash your hands after, and
• wash the items with detergent and hot water at the maximum available cycle length then machine dry them at the highest heat setting.

The post Prevention tips of norovirus appeared first on Doctorclean.

So, which of the gloves and automatic sensor sterilizer is more conducive to food safety?

Wearing gloves for food production and processing seems to have become a symbol of food safety, but in fact, this sense of security is only a false indication of the surface. Even better gloves are not likely to replace regular, thorough hand washing. Wearing gloves does not adequately prevent food contamination when processing direct foods. Conversely, because the wrong psychological cues may encourage some of the risky behavior of the operator to cause unforeseen risks.

For food practitioners, hand disinfection is a simple and negligible link that is largely ignored. There are many opportunities for bacteria, viruses, and dirt to come into contact with the outside world, and it is easy to be soiled. There are about 800,000 bacteria in a pair of unwashed hands. If the first hand disinfection is not complete, or if the hands are re-sterilized by the second hand disinfection within 60 to 90 minutes, even if the previously sterilized food is easily contaminated by the hand bacteria, the food will be cross-contaminated for the future. Mildew leaves a hidden danger.

Enterprises should establish a sanitation and disinfection procedure for “automatic hand washing, automatic hand drying, automatic disinfection”, and implement “GMP”, “SSOP”, “HACCP” and “QS” hygiene procedures, if each key position requires hand disinfection. Install an automatic sensor hand sterilizer, which meets the standard requirements, saves a lot of disinfectant, improves work efficiency, avoids secondary pollution before and after disinfection, and quickly kills hand bacteria, and calculates the time after the first sterilization. The hands are re-sterilized every 60 to 90 minutes to block the growth and reproduction of the bacteria in the hands.

After installing the automatic sensor hand sterilizer, if 75% medical alcohol is used as the disinfection medium, the process is: “Induction soap machine hand washing – faucet washing – inductive drying – inductive hand disinfection”; using other disinfectant as the disinfecting medium : “Induction of soap machine washing hands – faucet washing – inductive hand disinfection – inductive drying”; it is recommended to choose the previous method, because there is no residue in the hands after the alcohol is volatilized.

The warm, humid environment of the gloves is an ideal place for microbial reproduction. Different brands of gloves have different materials and the probability of cracking is different. For example, vinyl gloves are more likely to tear than latex, and another threat is that long nails or rings greatly increase the puncture gloves. Bacteria can spread even in tiny holes or through sweat. Harmful bacteria that spread from nails and jewelry are more concentrated than direct hands. Put on the gloves and repeat the timed disinfection. How many manufacturers can do it?

From the above argumentation, we can get a very good conclusion: while improving the work efficiency, the hand sterilizer also avoids the secondary pollution before and after disinfection, and achieves the effect of quickly killing the bacteria in the hand. Even better gloves are not likely to replace regular and thorough hand washing.

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