It is worth mentioning here that India's lockdown begins the day when China opens lockdown in the worst-affected province Hubei expect the epicentre city of Wuhan. With nearly two-months lockdown, China brought the situation under control as there is decline in the number of cases . All of the new cases are of those coming from abroad.
Apparently, India hopes for the same with 21 days of lockdown, as it will purify the population affected with the Covid-19.
Also Read: List of essential services that will remain open during 'Full Lockdown' of India over Covid-19
But, is it right to believe thoroughly in the lockdown? Lockdown is not a guarantee that a person will not get affected by the virus. Maybe, social distancing is enough to contain the spread of virus.
Fomites can become the agent in spreading the threat of novel coronavirus amid lockdown. Epidemiologists uses this term--Fomites widely. Fomites are objects that carry infection. Anything including clothes, utensils, newspapers, mobile phones, front-desk of a shop, packaged items, ATM machines and debit/credit cards, and even doorknobs, buttons in a lift, hand-rest of an escalator and furniture can be fomites.
Reportedly, in the previous coronavirus epidemic, SARS of 2002, fomites played a major role as contributor in Hong Kong, epicentre of the disease. Since fomites are inanimate objects and can not move on their own, humans have to come in their contact to get the virus.
However, the degree of risk posed by fomites depends on how long does novel coronavirus or any other pathogen survives on these objects. As novel coronavirus, now officially named as SARS-CoV-2, is a new virus to humans, studies are still underway to know everything about it.
So far, studies have found that on different objects novel coronavirus has different life span. On plastic and steel, novel coronavirus has been found to stay venomous for up to 72 hours. However, their ability to infect decreases significantly as hours pass by.
The problem is plastic and steel make up for far too many objects of everyday use. This means frequent cleaning of objects such as door knobs, elevator buttons, window pans, front-desks of shops etc is a must to fight Covid-19 effectively. Detergent or disinfectant is to be used for cleaning.
On a cardboard, novel coronavirus survives for up to 12 hours. This means if you order something, you should leave that package for 12 hours before opening the box. Or, sanitise it with an alcohol-based sanitiser.
This is exactly what you should be doing with your newspaper. The hawkers have more chances than others of catching the virus and passing the same on to newspaper surfaces, which are potential fomites when you touch early in the morning.
Going out is mostly restricted except for essential work and services in a lockdown. But if you have to go out, make sure you don’t carry fomites to your workplace or bring fomites back home. Remember, you cannot also afford to become fomites yourself and for that, you need to cover your head with disposable caps.
Take a packet of milk as an example. You buy it from a milk parlour or a grocery store. Don’t touch any surface there. Don’t come within sneezing distance of any person. Come home and clean the door knob with detergent or sanitiser. Change your clothes. Wash these clothes in detergent. Take a bath using soap.
Also clean the milk packet in a detergent solution before you or anyone else in the family opens it. This is to be repeated for everything that you bring or somebody else delivers at your doorstep.
Sanitise anything and everything that you use outside. This will keep your indoors a fomites-free zone.
But before we go, a factual reminder that no place on the earth is free from viruses and bacteria of some kind. The ongoing fight is against the newest member of human viruses. This is relatively unknown and extremely malicious, so it is more dangerous.
Make sure you are not giving enough chances to the novel coronavirus fomites to hide and hunt.