The novel coronavirus respects few boundaries. When you drive, everything from your car’s interior to the pump at the gas station poses risks.
The source of the disease COVID-19 also can contaminate your home’s interior — and even your clothes.
Although it’s easy to overlook this, your clothes can pick up the coronavirus and potentially spread it.
That is especially true in certain situations, as Consumer Reports notes:
“Laundering clothes and linens safely is particularly important if you’re living with someone who has a suspected or confirmed case of the new coronavirus, someone with a compromised immune system, or someone who works in a hospital or another place where there may be exposure to the virus.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends taking several precautions with laundry at this time.
For starters, wear disposable gloves if you are handling the clothes of someone infected with the virus. While that laundry is dirty, do not shake it — which can spread the germs into the air.
Once all contaminated clothes are in the washing machine, remove your gloves. Then, wash your hands right way — and do so thoroughly. We offer tips in “Beware These 7 Hand-Washing Mistakes.”
It’s fine to wash potentially contaminated clothes with other laundry, but it is best to wash anything contaminated at the warmest appropriate water setting, the CDC says. Dry the items thoroughly afterward.
Even if you aren’t sure whether clothes have been contaminated, it can make sense to take extra precautions during this time. The CDC has begun urging people to wear masks in public even if they do not know whether they have been infected, as we noted in “Should You Wear a Mask to Protect Against the Coronavirus?”
The CDC said it made the recommendation because people can spread COVID-19 even before they display symptoms, or know that they have been infected. So, a person can be infected — and spread the virus onto his or her clothes — without being aware of the fact.
If you want to be extra cautious, you could change clothes every time you have been out in an environment where you may have been exposed to the virus. Dr. Koushik Kasanagottu, an internal medicine resident at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, told Consumer Reports:
“As a healthcare worker myself, I change clothes immediately after coming home and sequester them with other exposed clothes.”
The CDC also reminds you to disinfect your clothes hamper regularly as long as COVID-19 continues to circulate.
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