According to the American researchers’ work, the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus lives in the air for several hours, and for days on some surfaces. It stays almost four hours on copper, one day on cardboard, and two to three days on plastic and stainless steel in particular. Therefore, the probability of catching an infection by simply touching a particular object is quite high, especially if you touch your eyes, nose or mouth after that.
Practically all specialized resources, websites of the World Health Organization, Ministry of Health, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (USA) advise not to touch your face. It is, however, incredibly difficult to do. The American newspaper Washington Post has counted a dozen cases when officials violated these recommendations right during speeches urging not to touch their lips, nose and eyes.
According to Australian scientists, even medical students who are aware of risks of such gestures touch their faces about 23 times per hour. Mouth, cheeks and chin are touched four times per hour, nose and eyes - three, ears and cheeks - once. The average duration of one touch is three seconds. According to other sources, people touch their faces 15.7 times per hour. Anyhow, even that is enough for the coronavirus to enter the body.
According to the work data by Australian researchers, a person touches his face 23 times per hour on average, or once every two and a half minutes. Most often people touch the mouth, cheeks and chin.
According to German scientists, spontaneous touching the face helps people cope with emotions and focus. The more stress (reports on a pandemic of a viral infection is quite stressful), the more often a person touches his mouth and nose and rubs his eyes longer.
Researchers asked 14 healthy volunteers to complete several written memory tests. Every five minutes during the test a high unpleasant sound was turned on causing participants discomfort. With the help of encephalography, scientists were monitoring the brain activity of volunteers in parallel. As it turned out, the number of face touches correlated with the level of stress, which was recorded on electroencephalograms.
People begin to behave this way when experiencing negative stress in the womb, they learnt in Britain. Having had examined the ultrasound examination results of 15 women at 24-36 weeks of gestation, scientists found that at times when the mother was stressed, the baby touched his face. Moreover, children of women who smoked during pregnancy touched their mouth and eyes more often than those born to mothers who were indifferent to cigarettes. However, these data cannot be considered statistically significant.
At the instinct level
Judging by the monkeys’ behavior, the desire to touch ourselves by the face in any incomprehensible situation is instinctive and characteristic of all primates. Gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees in this sense are exactly the same as humans. Moreover, most often animals, like us, touch the muzzle with their left paw.
Israeli scientists suggest that this is not only a matter of emotions, but also of additional information about others. The volunteers were given devices measuring the volume of inhaled air, and then they were observed during meetings with other people.
It turned out that each time after the research participant shook hands with the interlocutor of the same sex, he brought his fingers to his nose. The volume of air inhaled by him at that moment doubled. This may indicate that by touching the face after a handshake, people are testing the scent of another person. However, handshakes, as well as touching the mouth, nose and eyes, are now outlawed; there is scientific evidence confirming that it is also unsafe.
Thus, according to Chinese scientists who studied the spread of influenza A among students, almost 60 percent of viruses are transmitted between people through hands.
As for the instinctive touch on the face, experts suggest using latex gloves.
“When a person with a coronavirus is scratching his nose, then he grabs the door knob, and we grab it after him and then touch our mouths or noses, virus particles get on our faces. God forbid, we rub our eyes, and the particles will be on their mucous membrane. Therefore, when using public transport you should wear latex gloves. This is a very unusual sensation for a person who does not use them every day. You will concentrate on this and will not touch your face. We got up from the subway, got home, took the gloves off and threw them away,” professor Irina Makeyeva, Director of the E.V. Borovsky Institute of Dentistry of Sechenov University, said in a conversation with RIA Novosti.
Besides, computer and smartphone applications which make an unpleasant sound every time a person tries to touch his face, have already appeared. There is a website for children where they are explained why it is not good to constantly touch mouth, nose and eyes.
Photos are from open sources.
