Handwashing with soap and water is effective to prevent COVID-19

With a public health nurse as my mom, hand-washing was emphasized as I grew up. My husband grew up on a farm. If I tell him, “Dinner is ready, go wash your hands,” he gets up and washes his hands. In her elder years, my mom served the church as a “Sunday School Grandma.” Her biggest duties? Taking the little ones to the bathroom. One of my friend’s little boys so thoroughly washed his hands that she asked him, “Where did you learn to wash your hands like that?” “My Sunday School Grandma,” he answered.

I learned a new word: fomite. A fomite is an inanimate object that can transfer disease. According to the CDC a person is most likely to contract COVID-19 from aerosol transmittal, which means from droplets by coming into contact with another person. This is why social distancing and why washing your hands is important.

To keep you safe from COVID-19 the CDC recommends washing your hands with soap and water.

Why is plain old soap and water the most effective way to prevent viruses?  There are three reasons:

1. Washing with soap and water removes visible dirt and mucus.

2. Using a soap decreases surface tension, breaking the glue-like interaction between the virus and your skin.

3. The soap and water is physically removing whatever is on your hands. The outer-casing of the virus is made of lipids which are fats. Soap dissolves fat.

“The soap not only loosens the “glue between the virus and the skin but also the Velcro-like interactions that hold the proteins, lipids and RNA in the virus together,” according to, “The Science of soap – here’s how it kills the corona virus” theguardian.com.

Hand sanitizer cannot penetrate mucus. You would have to literally soak your hands in alcohol-based hand sanitizer for it to be as effective. Though hand sanitizer is recommended if you don’t have anything else or if you washed your hands but need to touch a door handle to arrive at your destination. As Australian professor of Chemistry Pall Thorardson wrote, “You can’t for any price, get a drug for the corona virus - - but your grandmother’s bar of soap kills it.”

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Other sources used: CDC- www.cdc.gov, NIH www.nih.gov, and  Pall Thordarson as interviewed in The Guardian. Thordarson is a professor of chemistry at the University of New South Wales, Sydney