Hello everyone, I'm Irminne Van Dyken MD from out of the doldrums, I'm a surgeon by trade but my true passion is helping people just like you. We obtain optimum health in case you haven't noticed that there's a little bit of an outbreak of the novel coronavirus or also known as covid19 or sars kov2. Just to be clear sars cov2 refers to the virus and the illness that the virus causes is called covid19. From now on, for simplicity I'm going to refer to sars Kobe 2 as COVID 19 and vice versa, so I know many of you are going to the store and you're stocking up. You're getting supplies and I know a lot of us are picking up cleaning up supplies for coronavirus to help prevent the spread of this infection, but many of the cleaning supplies are sold out. If you're lucky, you got some supplies before the store ran out either way and we hear it out of the doldrums have been wondering which ones are best and which ones will work in. A pinch is there any homemade solutions, so we did quite a bit of research and here's what we found.

First and foremost as always it's very important for me to say that you need to seek medical attention and advice if you or your family are feeling ill. The novel coronavirus is very new it and it didn't even exist 90 days ago, scientists are still nailing down the details of exactly how it is transmitted and infected of the coronavirus how long it will live outside the body. What we do know though is that this coronavirus is very similar to other coronaviruses namely, the ones that cause sars and mers that means that most of the information we have is based on research done on those particular strains and disinfected the coronaviruses because not many studies have been done yet on covid19. We have to make assumptions and inferences and we'll have to assume that what will kill the other strains of the coronavirus and will also kill covid19 and when I say kill let's talk about a little technicality. Technically, you cannot kill the coronavirus and you can inactivate it or you can neutralize it, which would prevent infection and spread, so if we're to be scientifically correct we'd have to refer to inactivating the coronavirus rather than killing it.

The novel coronavirus as of now, we know it's spread from person to person and people who are in close physical contact to each other and the type of virus transmission is called droplet transmission, in which means droplets that come from mucous membranes like a sneeze, droplets mucus or saliva can be transmitted easily from person to person. Usually, this type of transmission is most commonly seen among people that are within six feet of each other. Scientists are finding that the novel coronavirus can remain alive for hours to days and on surfaces, so it becomes very important that we make sure that all of our surrounding surfaces are clean with no coronavirus on them. It makes sense doesn't it that cleaning visibly dirty surfaces followed by infection is the best thing we can do to prevent transmission of covid19 and other illnesses.

Let's take a step back for a minute and talk about the difference between cleaning and disinfecting the virus. They're two very different things, cleaning refers to the removal of germs dirt and impurities from surfaces. In other words, if the surface is visibly dirty you're cleaning it by wiping off the dirt grime and other things. Cleaning does not necessarily kill things like bacteria or viruses but it does lower their numbers and lowers the risk of spreading infection. Disinfecting, on the other hand, refers to using chemicals that kill bacteria and viruses on surfaces by disinfecting a surface after cleaning it, you can further reduce the risk of spreading infection, and here's the thing though not all agents will adequately disinfect or kill the novel coronavirus COVID 19. In addition, many of the recommended disinfectant agents are quite toxic to both our bodies and the planet. Lastly, with the spread of COVID 19, many of the recommended disinfectants are sold out and they're unavailable in stores and online, so we're in a bit of a conundrum. Hopefully, this video will help out, as far as that's concerned. Let's back up and start with recommendations from the CDC regarding household cleaning and disinfection specifically in relation to the spread of novel coronavirus or covid19. They recommend routine cleaning of frequently touched surfaces like tables, doorknobs, light switches, handles, desks, toilets, faucets, and sinks with household cleaners and followed by a disinfectant. Keep in mind many of these disinfectant products are quite toxic and you really need to wear gloves while you use them and you should also make sure you have good ventilation in the area where you are working, so keep in mind that this recommendation is for any households covet 19 or not.

However, if there's someone in your home who may have or confirmed to have COVID 19, the recommendations change just a bit if this is the case you need to clean and disinfect and to decontaminate the coronavirus frequently touched. services daily in household common areas it's highly recommended that the sick individual is confined to one bedroom and one bathroom, limiting or eliminating time spent in common spaces. It recommended that if possible the ill person cleaned their room and their bathroom with an approved disinfectant that's shown to be effective against coronavirus and it's also recommended to frequently launder dirty clothes and of course most importantly you need to frequently wash your hands. Let's take a minute here and talk about handwashing. Good old-fashioned handwashing with soap and water does, it work well and it works against the novel coronavirus. Well, when you wash your hands you're coating them in a lather of soap sets and then you're scrubbing vigorously and then you're rinsing this and it physically removes pathogens from your skin. Fortunately, soap has been shown to incapacitate the sars virus and other similar coronaviruses, these types of viruses have an outer coating called an envelope it's this envelope that helps the virus latch on and invade new cells. We know that this viral envelope and soap have something very important in common fatty substances and these fatty substances interact with each other and when they do so, the envelopes get broken up which incapacitates the virus so basically, the soap renders the virus ineffective and there's no way it can affect a human cell after that encounter. What about hand sanitizers, well not all hand sanitizers are created equal. The CDC and world health organization recommend a hand sanitizer that's at least 60 percent alcohol in order to kill the novel coronavirus and here's the thing, many of the hand sanitizers on the market today are not at least 60 alcohol, so it's tough you have to make sure on the label that the sanitizer you have contains that amount of alcohol or greater, in order for it to kill the novel coronavirus. 

What if all the stores are sold out of that good old hand sanitizer and we're seeing it here on Maui, well you can just make your own I wouldn't just use any online recipe though use a reputable one like the recipe given out by the world health organization which I'll link below and basically they mix 99.9 isopropyl alcohol, 3 hydrogen peroxide, and glycerol in a certain ratio and giving you a final product of hand sanitizer that's 75 alcohol as a side note obtaining 99.9 isopropyl alcohol is quite difficult, so if you can get your hands on some 91 isopropyl alcohol which is readily available, you can use that but you're going to have to adjust the formula appropriately. According to this research paper published in January 2020 the world health organization homemade hand sanitizer recipe was tested against the sars and the mers coronaviruses and found to be very effective. According to these researchers, they expect a similar effect against covid19 and another note on alcohol just to be clear, spirits like the kind you drink it's a party and really don't have that high of an alcohol percentage most and spirits are 80 proof as such that's only 40 alcohol by volume, Now her close to the recommended 60 minimum to inactivate the coronavirus there are exceptions to this and you know if you would get your hands on a bottle of 90 proof ever clear you just might be in business so back to the approved disinfectants.