COVID-19: Why Is Hand Drying Equally Important As Handwashing?

Why Do Wet Hands Increase The Risk Of COVID-19?

Hands should be rubbed with soap for at least 20 seconds on both sides, as advised by the WHO and CDC. However, people, don't tend to wash hands properly with soap and water, said a microbiologist at the University of Leeds.

After washing hands, when people air-dry them, the pathogens get blown off due to the speed of the air and spread all over the washroom. This increases the chances of environmental and surface contamination by ten times as well as clothing contamination by five times.

According to a study published in the Journal Of Hospital Infection, hand dryers tend to spread more infection than paper towels. The study was conducted in public bathrooms of hospitals where they allowed only one way of drying the hands, either air dryers or paper towels.

In every four weeks periods, they evaluated the difference and found that bathrooms with air dryers create an aerosol that spread all over the toilet including floor, sinks, doorknobs and dryer itself. On the other hand, paper towels limited the virus just to itself. [1]

Why Disposable Paper Towel Is The Best Option?

Hand drying is very important, especially in healthcare departments as the chance of cross-infection of viruses is higher in such places. Therefore, while drying hands, paper towel is the most effective and quickest option compared to cloth roller towels or general use towel.

The proper drying of hands after washing them is an important part of hand hygiene as the transmission of pathogens are more from the wet hands compared to dry hands. A study says that drying hands with paper towel effectively removes bacteria and prevents cross-contamination.

Hand drying should be an important component of hand hygiene procedures. If an individual hand dries his/her hands without proper washing, the virus will remain. The same happenswhen a person washes their hands properly but does not dry them. The residual water on the hands tends to contaminate space and other objects even more wherever the droplets fall. This shows that when proper handwashing is combined with proper hand drying, the viruses get limited. [2]

Difference Between Paper Towel And Hot Air Dryers

The difference between them is based on three factors:

• Drying Efficiency: Paper towel takes around 10-15 seconds to attain 90 per cent of dryness while hot air dryer takes around 40-45 seconds to attain similar dryness. Also, with a paper towel, the residual water is reduced to 1 per cent while it is reduced to 3 per cent with the latter.
• Removal of bacteria: Using paper towels to dry hands reduces all types of bacteria on the hands while hot air drying increases all types of bacteria due to the spread of the droplets on dryer itself. Also, paper towel provides friction that further reduces the contamination on hands, especially from the fingertips.
• Effect on cross-contamination: The dispersal of viruses by air dryers can spread to a radius of around three feet while with a paper towel, no such dispersions take place. Therefore, hot air dryers are not suitable in critical places as they may increase the risk of cross-infection. Also, jet air dryers can disperse the contamination to around two metres, making paper towels the best option among all.
• Other issues: Other disadvantagesof air dryers are skin irritation and roughness and noise which is equal to a heavy truck passing three metres away.

To Conclude

Hand drying should become an important part of hand hygiene seeing its need in containing the infection. The degree of wetness after washing hands determines the residual pathogens which should be wiped away by paper towels as theyare easy and do not spread the viruses elsewhere.