Have you come up with a plan to minimize getting
the coronavirus and bringing it back home with your groceries?
And what have you done to reduce your risk of you getting it or
your family getting it from your grocery shopping?
No worries.
Today, we're going to do a video that explains how to clean your groceries and
protect you and your loved ones as best you can from getting COVID-19 and other viruses.
One of my viewers had asked me,
how do I properly clean my groceries to not get COVID-19 when I'm at my house?
I thought that was a great question is that's why I'm making a video today about it.
So in the future, if anybody has any questions,
leave me a comment and I'd be happy to make a video.
Hey everyone.
I'm Doctor Wagner.
I'm a board-certified emergency medicine physician.
And on my show, I answer your urgent medical questions and
clear up myths about deadly diseases.
Make sure you hit that subscribe button and turn your bell notifications on.
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So the first thing you need to do is plan before you're going.
Doing a little bit too much is better than doing less.
Make sure you put a list together of everything that you need, either on paper or on your phone,
and make sure that you're planning to get a little bit more food than you would think too.
That way you can spread out how often you need
to go to the grocery store and delay it a little bit longer.
Now make sure if you have a household that you are sending the healthiest person to the
store and avoid sending any extra people to the store, to minimize the amount of people there.
And this might be really obvious to most of you but don't go if you're sick.
If you have a cold or a cough or any of those simple signs symptoms,
you probably have something and you don't want to give it to anybody else.
Also, you can wear a mask.
You can also wear gloves, but the masks and the gloves we'll go over in another video.
When you're at the grocery store.
Easiest thing to do is to pay with a credit card, to minimize giving cash and a clean object.
Make sure that you give as much distance as you can in general,
in every activity that you are doing at the grocery store,
from picking out your groceries, to standing in line, to giving the cashier your money.
Another thing that's really important is realizing
that you shouldn't be touching things and putting them back on the shelves.
Look at the product.
Don't touch it because your hands are dirty.
You don't want to share that with others if you're putting it back on the shelf.
Also, something to be aware of some areas in the United States have grocery delivery.
So that could be another option to reduce your risk.
Now, when you're finished getting your groceries,
make sure you put them in your trunk and hand sanitize when getting into your car.
Now that you're at home, think of the idea that everything that you
just bought is covered with a fine powder that you can't see.
If you shake it out too rough, it'll go everywhere in the air.
And also you want to clean off all that powder by wiping it down with a disinfectant or a spray.
So the disinfectants or the sprays or the wipes go on to the CDC website
for their recommendations on what to use and check it out.
Now, when you're at home set out an area that you can think of as
the hot zone versus the cold zone or the dirty zone versus the clean zone.
Realizing you just walked into the house with your
groceries and put them in an area where it's dirty.
Your hands are dirty as well.
But before we talk about this, know about the virus that we're dealing with.
They've done studies to show that the virus lives in the air for about three hours, about four hours
on copper material, about 24 hours on cardboard, two days on metal, and three days on plastic.
So be aware our grocery bags or plastic.
So we'll talk about that in just a minute.
Now, remember you can wear gloves or you could just use your hands.
So if you're going to use gloves, you can use the gloves that we have
at the house for washing dishes, or you can use medical gloves,
but realize that these gloves, once you touch something is going to be dirty.
So don't touch the clean area with your dirty hands.
You can use different types of products to clean your groceries.
Today, I'm going to use a disinfecting wipe.
That's actually safe for your hands.
There are other ones out there such as this one that does recommend,
the manufacturer recommends wearing gloves for, to protect your own skin.
I'm not going to use these wipes today on the groceries.
Now I've started with clean hands.
I've disinfected them, myself.
I washed them all right.
Now it's time to get your favorite disinfecting out and wipe down your groceries.
I'm going to use my yellow container, grabbing a disinfecting wipe and grabbing the groceries.
I got my puff chips here, or what are they?
The nutty puffs.
And we're going to clean out the outside of the bag cause it's plastic.
So wipe it down, make sure everything is wet.
I'm going to place it down into the clean zone.
And then we're going to do this again for every
product that we have that has a plastic outside, glass, or can.
So we wipe down the outside.
It's fully wet.
Now we placed it down on the clean side.
Now we have other products that you have that come in boxes.
Pizza boxes, cookies, anything like that.
The outside of the box could be contaminated, but on the inside is typically wrapped.
So individually wrapped things are fine.
A box of cookies, they're also fine.
So easiest thing you could probably do is take them out of the box and
separate them that way versus having to clean every single individual thing.
So what we'll do now is take it out of the box.
On cardboard, if it does have the COVID-19 on it, it could last up to 24 hours.
So I'm being very vigilant not to touch the inside.
The box is open, wow what you can do is let them pour out.
This is dirty.
So we're going to get rid of it.
And those are clean.
And then the other thing I would like to talk about, you can do any products I had bought.
I needed to get new face soap, again,
clean everything, even though it's soap really cleaned the outside of it.
And again, place it down in a clean zone.
Something to talk about is produce.
So produce is very poorest.
We have different vegetables, fruits, different things like that.
Do not use soap and water on these because they might absorb the soap
where you can do is take them to your sink, wash them, then lead them to dry,
place them inside the refrigerator or place them anywhere you need to place them and let them sit.
But there's been anecdotal evidence and stories that people use white vinegar.
So white vinegar can be used one part or one
cup to four cups of water if you want to soak it versus spraying.
As I said other people have been doing it.
Leave a comment if you have been doing this and let me know how it works.
Now, there are another thing you need to realize that the virus has been stable when frozen.
So a lot of things we think if we freeze it, will kill it.
Previous coronaviruses do not die or are not killed when they are frozen.
So something to be aware of, especially when you get poultry or meats,
you need to take them out of those containers safely.
Like we have done and potentially put them in another container,
Such as these, and then put them in the freezer.
When you're done cleaning all your groceries,
you're left with a clean zone and the hot zone and you have dirty hands potentially.
So you want to take care of the dirty zone.
You want to either take the bags and throw them out if that's what you do or
set them aside for three to four days away in the garage, outside that way, you know,
the virus is potentially dying, especially since we know that it lasts for three days on plastic.
Also, when you go to throw different things out
like the cardboard boxes or the boxes that your food came in, don't shove them down.
Cause when you shove them down, things jump up into the air.
They aerosolize out and you don't want to do that.
Gently place them in.
Also as an aside, people had been asking about cardboard from Amazon boxes and
shipments and what to do with that since the virus could live hours to a day on cardboard.
So what I suggest to people is that you open it up just outside your house, realizing that
your hands are now dirty, empty the product out, go wash your hands and then pick up the
product that you need and leavee the cardboard outside for a day and then take care of it.
Now that you have taken care of all the dirty products. Now go ahead and wash your hands
with soap and water and go ahead and put away everything that's in your clean zone and make sure
that you wipe down all the surfaces that were the dirty areas that you had previously had things on.
Now I use the wipes.
You can use whatever spray that you have.
You can spray onto a towel and do the same thing.
Just get it sopping wet, like a wipe would be.
Now, I want you all to remember that we do not need to hoard food or toilet paper.
We're all in this together.
Stay home as much as you can right now, please.
We are still seeing new cases in the community pop-up which
means people are still sharing with each other.
So we need to be aware and more vigilant to stay home and reduce the spread of this virus.
All right, that's been disinfecting groceries, one on one with me, Doctor Wagner.
I hope I answered some of the questions that you
guys had in your minds about how to take care of your groceries.
Now, if you have any comments about cleaning your groceries,
or if you've seen any unique things at the grocery stores, please let me know and leave a comment.
Also, leave a comment below if you have any other medical
questions that you want me to make a video about.
And as always, please hit the subscribe button and
turn your bell notifications on, and also hit that like button.
Thank you for watching and stay healthy my friends.