Question

This is made up scenario. Assuming you are a teacher and you took your student to a nearby Meijer to examine how dirty shopping carts truly are. According to several recent health warnings, "swabs taken from shopping cart handles and seats have shown saliva, blood, fecal matter, mucus (and worse), plus Listeria, Salmonella, Staph, E. Coli and general individual bacteria".This most definitely makes me not want to touch shopping carts with my bare hands! With COVID-19 taking place, it has created a global pandemic "occurring on more than one continent"; we see grocery stores providing more sanitation wipes at the door, and hand sanitizer to reassure the shopping carts are clean and ready to be used for the next customer.

Here comes the question for you based on the scenario above.

In your opinion, do you think sanitation wipes and hand sanitizer is enough to stop spread the germs and prevent people from spreading bacteria to one another? Tell me what you think is the best way to eliminate harmful microbes from the grocery store to keep customers healthy and safe?

Answer 1

During this Pandemic situation Hand sanitisation is one of major method of prevention. Here Use an alcohol-based hand rub occur. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers can quickly reduce the number of germs on hands in some situations, but sanitizers do not eliminate all types of germs.

Sanitizing wipes are designed to kill germs and bacteria and are safe for cleaning food contact surfaces in your commercial kitchen, grocery shop. In my point of view these two (Hand sanitizer, sanitizing wipes) control the spread of germs and prevent people from spreading bacteria to one another effectively but you can not say that they fully stop the spreading of virus. For COVID19 other some important method necessary to stop the spreading ; Social distance maintain, use of mask etc.

Spreading of corona virus through grocery store also a major concern during this pandemic situation. Consumers should first evaluate their own risk level for catching the virus before deciding to visit a grocery store. Spreading can be minimize in grocery store by some step like

1) Consumer should list the number of goods that necessary and by online mode ,order these goods / home delivery system . So the touching of goods is quite less in this process elimination of  the spreading viruses can be done.

2) People should try to think in terms of buying at least two weeks’ worth so they can minimize the number of trips that they’re actually taking to the grocery store.

3) Unless use of glove and mask, no one should allow to enter into the grocery store.

4) Grocery store should take new measures such as installing plexiglass shields at cash registers, closing down hot food bars, offering hand sanitizer to customers and packaging bakery items that are usually loose in bins, such as fresh doughnuts and pastries.

5) The floor and the grocery area should be disinfectant spray thoroughly time to time to stop spreading of virus.

6) Allow limited people for a proper time and mark the area to stay by the customer to maintain the social distance.

7) Many grocery stores have stopped allowing the use of reusable bags because of the potential risks to their workers. So they provide use and throw bag.

Hope it clear your doubt. Thank you