How to Neutralize a Potential Coronavirus Culprit

Sanitize your Cellphones!

One of the preventive measures health experts recommend to prevent coronavirus infection is to not touch your face. Research indicates that some of us touch our cellphones up to thousands of times each day, and when we take or make calls, we hold our phones up to our faces.

Since these can be among our most highly touched surfaces, here are some tips to disinfect them.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises that you wear disposable gloves while disinfecting, throw them away when you’re finished and then thoroughly wash your hands,” says LSU Health New Orleans professor and Infectious Diseases specialist Dr. Fred Lopez.

Before you begin, turn your phone off and disconnect it from your charger.

If you don’t have disinfectant wipes, you can spray an alcohol-based based (70% isopropyl) solution on a soft, lint-free cloth and then gently wipe down your device. Just be sure that you don’t saturate the cloth.

tips to dinfect your cellphone

Other helpful suggestions include not laying your phone down on highly touched surfaces and using Bluetooth, earbuds or a hands-free headset to keep your phone away from your face.

“The virus can live on surfaces for hours to days, and it just makes sense to regularly disinfect our phones and even more often when you think they may have come into contact with the virus,” adds Dr. Lopez. “By eliminating this possible source of infection, we can help protect not only ourselves, but the community and flatten the curve.”