El Paso doctor says keeping to basics will help you avoid contracting COVID-19 in public
EL PASO, Texas — New data from the City of El Paso showed that many of those who have tested positive for COVID-19 believe they contracted the virus at retail stores.
The information was based on what they were told during contact tracing, according to city officals.
Stores were ranked the highest, and one El Paso doctor said while yes, it’s risky to be in a public place, your safety narrows down to the basic precautions.
Wear your mask, wash your hands, stay at home: Those are the ways public health experts and doctors say you can keep yourself and others safe from the coronavirus.
“No single intervention is going to be 100 percent effective,” Dr. Armando Meza, the chief of infectious disease sat the Paul L Foster School of Medicine, said. “It will minimize the risk, but it will never eliminate it completely.”
On Monday, cases in in El Paso continued to rise.
Information shared by El Paso’s Health Authority showed that those who tested positive admitted to being at public places or travelling.
“We can see how many people recall being any of those places,” Dr. Hector Ocaranza with the authority said.
The area that was recalled the most was stores.Specific stores were not mentioned.
Meza said going to any public place increases the risk of catching the virus.
“Being exposed to the droplets that are out of the air,” Meza said. “Any droplets that have already landed on a surface.”
Meza said those are the two ways that you are most likely to contract the virus, and when shopping at stores, where hundreds of people go in and out, potentially touching the same objects, you have to be extra careful.
“The regular cloth face masks are mainly to be protecting the individual,” Meza said.
“The surface materials that keep the virus longer are more plastic or metals ones.”
Meza said it’s a basic message that might be redundant but that sticking with the basic is how you can keep from contracting and spreading the virus.
“If you’re going to a public place, as well as wearing the mask, which is critical, you clean your hands with soap and water,” Meza said.
Meza said that it’s on the businesses and community to stay sanitized.
On top of wearing a mask and washing your hands, Meza shared extra precautions you can take in public:
- Putting hand sanitizer on before entering the store and when you leave the store.
- Using curbside pick-up any chance possible
- Using a delivery service
- Only going to the store once a week, instead of multiple times a day or week
- Sending only one person from your household to the store
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