Advertisement
Opinion | Covid-19 hygiene: are we sanitising our way to the next health disaster?
- Liberal use of disinfectant may protect us from Covid-19 in the short term, but harm public health in the long run
- In the current sanitising frenzy, the ominous threat of antimicrobial resistance has fallen off the world’s agenda
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
Having coffee in central Hong Kong is now a different experience from eight months ago. My temperature is checked before ordering, a mask must be worn when not eating or drinking, the table I sit at is well spaced from others and only two people can enjoy this break together.
Advertisement
We have become uneasily accustomed to this ritual, and apart from some mild personal inconvenience, there is no lasting effect from such social distancing measures.
Yet before I am seated, my table has been liberally cleaned with disinfectant; I am likely to rub my hands with hand sanitiser, perhaps several times during the coffee break; and, at intervals, staff come by and spray the carpet between the tables with another disinfectant solution.
Unlike social distancing, however, these chemical measures may be harming us in the long term, though they protect us in the short term.
When US President Donald Trump made his now infamous gaffe about injecting disinfectant to cleanse the inside of the body to treat Covid-19, it seemed so preposterous and ill-informed that surely nobody would take him seriously.
03:02
Trump says injecting sanitiser comment was sarcastic as Covid-19 deaths in US surpasses 50,000
Trump says injecting sanitiser comment was sarcastic as Covid-19 deaths in US surpasses 50,000
Alas, multiple reports detail that some people in the United States did just that, drinking hand sanitiser, bleach and household disinfectant products, which resulted in multi-organ damage, blindness and, in a few cases, death.
Advertisement