If someone in your home has caught a flu bug, there is a real possibility of contracting that virus as you are all living under the same roof in close contact.
Beyond practising basic hygiene such as covering your mouth when sneezing or coughing and washing your hands frequently with soap, it is important to know how to disinfect your home to prevent the spread of the virus within the home.
1. PREPARE YOUR DISINFECTING TOOLS
Mild cleaners and water might not be strong enough to kill virus and bacteria, so we recommend proper disinfectants to do the job right. Here’s what you need to disinfect the surfaces in your home:
1. Disinfectant spray / anti-bacterial cleaner
2. Cleaning cloth
3. Alcohol wipes
4. Cotton swabs
2. DISINFECT SURFACES
As viruses can live on hard surfaces for 24 hours, it is important to pay special attention to the surfaces that the sick person touched and prepare to disinfect them.
A sick person would usually be confined to the bedroom and bathroom, so key areas to disinfect include tabletops, remote controls, phones, computer keyboards, door knobs, switches, faucets, and toilet seats.
Apply the disinfectant solution and ensure that the surface is visibly wet for four minutes before wiping it dry with a cleaning cloth. After cleaning the contaminated surface, do NOT re-use the cleaning cloth on other surfaces in the house. Instead, disinfect it by soaking it in a solution of bleach (1/2 cup) and 4 litres of hot water.
3. DISINFECT PERSONAL APPLIANCES
Do not neglect smaller personal appliances such as personal electronics and remote controls! Being touched often, they harbour germs from our hands. Wipe them down using alcohol wipes and cotton swabs to disinfect them.
4. DISINFECT BEDSHEETS
We spend most of the time in bed resting when we're sick. As such, we leave a lot of germs and bacteria in the fabrics of the bedsheets, pillow cases and cushion covers, since they are in direct contact with the body.
After the sick person has recovered, strip the bed of its sheets and pillow cases and wash them immediately. When doing laundry, separate the sick person’s pyjamas with from the rest of the laundry load — do not wash them together.
Add 1/2 cup of colour-safe bleach to hot water (if the fabrics allow it) and wash for one cycle. The damp environment in the washing machine could potentially breed germs, so do wipe your washing machine dry and allow it to air after washing the sick laundry.
5. DISINFECT CLOTHING
It is important to wash a sick person's laundry separately from the rest of the laundry load — a sick person's clothes might contain viruses from their bodily fluids such as sweat, mucus and saliva.
Carry out the same washing procedure as the bedsheets to ensure that the sick laundry is properly disinfected.