Is it safe to eat out during flu season?
In this short article, we will provide an answer to the question “is it safe to eat out during flu season?” and detailed guidelines to be followed.
Is it safe to eat out during flu season?
Yes, it is possible to eat out during flu season, but it is dangerous and requires many precautions. Restaurants receive regular food safety inspections, however, research indicates that up to 60% of businesses do not adhere to appropriate food hygiene practices, despite this. Although good food safety practices are followed in a restaurant setting, cross-contamination may occur as a consequence of customer contact.
Menus are a common item at restaurants, and they are often handled. In addition, they are not cleaned regularly, which poses a major threat of contamination. Unfortunately, the use of plastic encourages the development of microorganisms. Bring hand sanitizer with you and use it soon after completing your purchase, or just wash your hands after making your purchase.
Wash Your Hands Before Executing Food
Let us now turn our attention to food. In certain situations, such as eating in the car, between meetings, or during class, it may be necessary to forgo using a knife and fork for practical or personal reasons. This is not an acceptable reason to disregard the golden rule of hand washing before eating a meal. No number of food safety measures will keep you safe from your dirty fingers, and this is especially true if you are dining in an atmosphere that is infected with pathogens. Was it ever brought to your attention that the average workplace desk contains a greater number of germs than a toilet seat? Indeed, office toilet seats had only 49 germs per square inch, compared to roughly 21,000 germs per square inch on computer desktops.
According to Food Safety News, a list of guidelines for eating with your hands in the absence of utensils has been published.
- Before you eat, wash your hands thoroughly. If soap and water aren’t available, use hand sanitizer to disinfect your hands–especially after handling anything on the menu.
- Use the wrapper provided to keep the food contained; alternatively, use a napkin to clean off any finger food that may have gotten on your fingers.
- Finally, always wash your hands after eating, since food left on your hands may feed germs, leading you to get sick the next time you consume anything that has bacteria.
Our hands are responsible for the transmission of 80 percent of germs
We all know that our hands play a crucial role in the transmission of infectious diseases, whether we are in public or private life. Even though our hands carry about 80 percent of germs, only approximately 5 percent of the population adequately washes their hands. Customer sickness may occur if restaurant workers do not wash their hands as often as recommended by food safety best practices.
As explained by Lisa Mack, a Communicable Disease Investigator, infectious disease transmission can occur through direct contact with an infected person, contact with an infected item, fecal-oral, droplet-transmitted, vector-transmitted, sexual transmission, and animal-human transmission, among other routes. The start of flu season has raised the risk of illness transmission even more, as previously stated.
What is the precise definition of seasonal influenza?
Influenza viruses of type A and B are the most common viruses that cause seasonal influenza (or “flu”). Common symptoms include fever, cough (usually dry), headache, muscle and joint pain, sore throat, and runny nose, among other things. Coughing bouts may be intense and last for many days or even weeks at a time. People who do not seek medical attention often recover from fever and other symptoms within a week after being symptomatic. However, influenza may cause severe illness or even death in certain high-risk groups (see Who is at risk? below for more information on this).
How are you planning on putting a stop to its spread?
When a person who has been infected coughs or sneezes, virus droplets are discharged into the atmosphere. Also conceivable is that it will spread via the use of virus-infected hands.
Precautions should be taken to avoid transmission. When coughing, people should use a tissue to cover their mouth and nose and then throw it away. They should also properly and often wash their hands.
Who are the most vulnerable people?
Individuals who fall into one of the following categories are at greater risk of getting severe seasonal influenza:
• pregnant women at any point of their pregnancy
• youngsters under the age of five years old.
• those who are above the age of 65
Patients with chronic medical conditions such as HIV/AIDS, asthma, cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases, or diabetes are, particularly at risk.
Health-care professionals, for example, are among those who are most vulnerable to influenza illness.
Conclusion
In this short article, we provided an answer to the question “is it safe to eat out during flu season?” and detailed guidelines to be followed.
