How to safely disinfect your phone to keep viruses at bay

Coronavirus outbreak continues to be at the forefront of people’s minds, especially after Tanzania registered its first coronavirus death. If you’ve been following the latest updates on coronavirus from reliable sources, you’ve likely heard that social distancing, hand washing, liberal use of hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes and other good hygiene habits can keep the virus at bay.

But have you ever imagined that your mobile phone could ruin all those efforts and potentially expose you at risk of catching those viruses?

Majority of us don’t give a second thought in using our cell phones everywhere, from our morning commute, dinner table to the doctor’s office.

But studies show that cell phones are far dirtier than most people think, and the more germs they collect, the more germs you touch.

Last week I came across a study carried out by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), titled ‘Pathogenic microbes contaminating mobile phones’. The researchers collected almost 30 mobile phones from the students of University of Arizona, USA, with the aim to quantitavely determine the germ contamination of the students’ mobile phones.

The study eventually found that cell phones carry 10 times more germs and bacteria than most toilet seats. Yes, you read it right!

From medical point of view, coronavirus and other germs can live on surfaces like glass, metal or plastic for as little as two hours and up to as long as nine days, and phones are known to carry thousands of various types of germs.

How to keep your phone germ-free

Now try to imagine how useless and meaningless does it sound, to often hold your mobile phone after regularly washing your hands and sanitizing them?

If you turn around and pick up a dirty phone right away, you are potentially exposing yourself to the same germs you just got rid off from your hands. There are also some practices you should start adopting to help keep your phone as germ free as possible.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends you continue to wash hands regularly, especially before picking up your device.

The same way we are reminded of regular hand hygiene, so is disinfecting our phones; and the good thing is that, our mobile phones are sanitizer-friendly. Making sense that sanitizer can get rid of the same germs found on our mobile phones without causing any technical harm to the device.

We regularly touch surfaces with our hands, but perhaps the most frequently hand-handled item we use is our smartphones.

Few weeks ago, the giant manufacturing mobile companies Samsung and Apple updated their websites with recommendations to their customers that it’s okay to wipe their products with disinfecting solution that contains at least 55 per cent of alcohol. This gives us greenlight to wipe our mobile phones by using the commonly used hand sanitizers or antibacterial wipes.

More important than sanitizing your own possessions all day long, it’s being careful when interacting with objects touched regularly by other humans in quick succession. An ATM machine for instance, has almost certainly been touched continuously by hundreds of people. If you touch one of those things, use hand sanitizer, or wash your hands as soon as you can.

The author is a medical doctor based in Dar es salaam.