With the coronavirus engulfing the entire world, another debate has been formed on soaps and sanitizers. Cleaning hands properly is one of the major steps to stop the spread of coronavirus. However, what if sanitizers go out of stock, or what if you cannot afford sanitizers?
The answer lies in soap. Every household keeps a soap with itself. Cleaning hands with soaps is actually more efficient than cleaning hands with sanitizers.
What really happens to the coronavirus when you wash your hands with soap:
COVID-19 Coronavirus' anatomy
We all have heard that it has spikes of the round structure that latch on to our cells. These spikes are made out of proteins. But do you see the red ring -- called the envelope or lipid bilayer-- that made out of fat.
Fat is essentially made of oils, so it is ineffective against water, just like you trying to rinse a frying pan with just water. But when you use soap, something changes. But why?
Soap loves water and fat
Soap molecules are attracted to two things -- water and fat. So when you wet your hands and wash them with soap, it literally dissolves the envelope, when this happens, it destroys whatever is in the virus, making it ineffective.
But why 20 seconds?
Even though fat envelop doesn’t stand a chance against soap, it needs time to fully dissolve and that timing is 20 seconds not a second less.
Types of soap
While there are various kinds of soap available in the market -- you have antiseptic, antibacterial, antimicrobial, all of them work. Even the regular soap we use for bathing works just fine because, in the end, soap molecules are hungry for fats. Just the timing of 20 seconds is key.
Hand sanitizers vs soap
With more COVID-19 cases surfacing in the country, people ran to buy more sanitizers, eventually exhausting all stocks and making shopkeepers very happy. And sure, hand sanitizers do work (60 percent alcohol onwards) well against COVID-19, the effectiveness reduces with the condition your hands are in. CDC has pointed out that dirty or sweaty hands reduce the effectiveness of sanitizers, making soap the gold standard for personal