Getting a cold can be annoying, but there are places you can avoid to minimize your chances of catching one this fall and winter. These places experience higher exposure to cold-causing pathogens. If you must visit these places, remember to bring hand sanitizer.
Hospitals
Try not to go to hospitals unless you’re sick. Nosocomial infections are those transmitted from sick hospital patients and staff to healthy hospital patients, visitors, and staff. These include colds. You can’t even let your guard down near doctors there! Studies reveal that 80 percent of doctors continue working despite being ill.
Buffets
Buffets are scary avenues for catching colds because your food interacts not only with restaurant staff, but with other restaurant patrons as well. 63 percent of restaurant staff disclose that they cooked, chopped, and served food while being sick.
Malls
Shopping carts, elevator buttons, and door handles are just a few of the things covered with germs that you have to touch when at the mall. Not everyone is considerate enough to sanitize their hands after sneezing, thus inevitably leaving germs on everything they touch. Your chances of catching a cold from touching one of the many surfaces held by others at the mall are high, but you can decrease these by not touching your face while at the mall and sanitizing your hands frequently.
Airplanes
Counterintuitively, planes don’t have good incoming ventilation from outside air. The air inside a plane is recycled for the duration of each flight. Thus, you’re cramped in a small area and forced to breathe in everyone else’s sneezes and coughs.
Hotel rooms
Although daily cleaned, the cleaning staff don’t sanitize light switches, remote controls, and other uncommonly sanitized objects and surfaces that are held frequently. Studies show that these uncommonly sanitized objects are harboring the germs of previous guests.
It’s not always possible to avoid catching a cold this fall and winter. However, you can avoid these places to decrease your chances. Regardless, you should always bring hand sanitizer with you when you leave home and resist touching your eyes, mouth or nose when in public.
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