3 Reasons Why You Should Use Hand Sanitizers This Festive Season

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The pandemic has made it truly challenging to celebrate quality time with friends and family. After more than a year of staying indoors and maintaining safe distance from loved ones, we seem to be getting past complete lockdowns. More importantly, with vaccinations rolling in and the festive season around the corner, there is room for some cheer. Yet, it is important that we do not lose sight of the need of the hour - following pandemic safety tips and best practices such as using hand sanitizers to ensure the virus does not get the better of us.

Of course, it is easy to make the mistake of overlooking such practices during the festive season since we are largely meeting friends and family. We tend to place high trust in them with regards to matters of health and safety and expect them to be safe if they are vaccinated.

Yet, avoiding safety best practices or frequently using hand sanitizers while interacting with friends and family this festive season can be one of the biggest mistakes you can make while the pandemic continues to rage on for the foreseeable future.

In fact, here are 3 key reasons why you should use hand sanitizers this festive season:

Frequently touched surfaces:

The festive season is all about visiting friends and family, especially because several people were unable to meet in the last one year and more. Hence, it is common to have several people visiting a home within a span of hours. This translates into exposure to more people for frequently touched surfaces such as doorbells, knobs, and handles.

While on regular days, homeowners might be sanitizing such surfaces on a consistent basis, they might not be able to do while receiving a high volume of guests. Further, even if they do, it may not be possible to sanitize all such surfaces, especially inside the home, including refrigerator doors and so on. However, this does not diminish the risk of such surfaces being exposed to the virus. In fact, since guests are likely be unmasked indoors, there are high chances of them passing on the virus to frequently touched surfaces inside the home if they are COVID-positive.

Hence, it makes sense to carry a hand sanitizer in your pocket while visiting loved ones; you can simply rub your hands with it while opening or shutting doors, touching switches, and similar other surfaces.

High volume of gifts:

It is customary to gift sweets, dry fruits and other goodies during the festive season. However, with so many gifts been purchased, returned, and exchanged in a rush, it is hard to tell if all of them have been packed and shared using safe practices.

Further, it is quite possible that in all the excitement which comes with unwrapping gifts, one may forget to consider sanitizing the gift and its contents before handling it. Now this can be a major risk if the gift has been packed only a couple of hours ago and has been exposed to a COVID-positive person.

Having a hand sanitizer with you in such situations can make things a lot easier. You can use it while handling the gift or after you have carefully appreciated it and put it back in its box. This allows you to enjoy sharing gifts and sweets with loved ones without worrying about the possibility of touching any contaminated gift or box.

Hugs and handshakes:

It is almost impossible to celebrate festivals with friends and family without some amount of physical contact. While it is critical that you avoid touching each other's faces or embrace with long hugs, it is possible that you may indulge in a few quick hugs and handshakes. While this is as risky as spending time with people without masks in a low-ventilation environment, you can minimize the risk by ensuring you sanitize your hands before and after such physical interactions.

In this manner, you can maximize the safety of your loved ones as well as your own safety as far as hand hygiene is concerned. Sanitizing your hands cannot compensate for airborne transmission if you are not wearing requisite masks.

Conclusion:

Using hand sanitizers while meeting friends and family this festive season can be a highly effective tool in using adequate hand hygiene and safety. This, along with other best practices such as wearing masks, ensuring proper ventilation indoors, and getting together with other fully vaccinated adults can go a long way in ensuring your safety while celebrating amidst the pandemic.

Further, it is important that you invest in hand sanitizers that feature adequate alcohol content and are highly effective in offering virus protection. Brands offer hand sanitizers that deliver on these criteria as well as on a pleasant experience by offering a choice of different fragrances.