LUBBOCK, Texas – People may not realize it, but viruses and other sicknesses can live on surfaces for a lot longer than they expect.
The flu virus can live on surfaces for up to two days. The cold virus and stomach bug stays for up to a week. Staff, E. Coli and salmonella viruses can last even longer.
“You need to clean the surface,” said Chris Truitt, GermBlast Chief Science Officer. “You want to remove what we call that organic material. You want to make sure and get that out of the way and then you want to use an EPA approved disinfectant and apply that to the environment.”
At home, experts say to use disinfectant and make sure the wipes soak up to five minutes and let sprays sit up to 10 minutes to kill those organisms.
“We wipe down all the surfaces with Lysol wipes. I say all, anything that they touch frequently,” said Chandra Malone, Western Elementary kindergarten teacher. “The supplies we do that, the handles on the facets they didn’t think about that, the soap dispensers even and the hand sanitizers even and at first they didn’t get it.”
Over the last 14 years, Malone said she regularly does this routine in her classroom when dealing with sicknesses.
“First-year teaching everyone was sick because I didn’t think about that,” Malone said. “I was like oh, oh yeah and so this year the education and using all those tools, I really haven’t had that many kids out sick this year.”
GermBlast is teaching kids and faculty the right way to clean and wash their hands.
“Get a good lather going. You want to get the palms of your hands, you want to get in between your fingers, you want to get your fingertips, scrub those, back of your thumbs,” Truitt said. “If you do that, I mean that it takes about 20 seconds, singing the Happy Birthday song twice.”
If you do not have access to soap and water, the same thing needs to be done with alcohol based hand sanitizer.
