Coronavirus: is China’s rigorous home disinfection prudent disease control, falsely reassuring or overkill?

Name: Covid-19 workers in China douse entire flat with disinfectant while owner is away
Uploaded: 2022-05-21T06:08:01.000Z
Duration: 2 min 2 s
Description: Covid-19 workers in China douse entire flat with disinfectant while owner is away

Emphasising deep cleaning aligns with Beijing’s persistent view the virus can spread from surfaces, and may originally have been imported into Wuhan on goods

Experts say better ventilation and air circulation, as well wearing masks, would better prevent the spread of Covid-19

Reading Time:6 minutes

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Workers in protective suits take a lift to disinfect a residential area during lockdown, amid the coronavirus pandemic, in Shanghai on May 18. Photo: Reuters

Zhuang Pinghui

Published: 2:08pm, 21 May 2022Updated: 6:06pm, 21 May 2022

Under China’s tough Covid-19 response, testing positive means not only being taken away for treatment or isolation instead of resting at home, it also means returning home to find everything from the refrigerator to quilts, thoroughly sprayed with disinfectant.

Residents of Shanghai, Jiangsu and Jilin complained online they had found their homes wrecked with disinfectants – in some cases disinfection occurred without the homeowners’ consent.

And last week, the government of Dandong on the border with North Korea, a country now battling an “explosive” outbreak, told residents their homes must undergo deep disinfection before they return from isolation for Covid-19, with or without their consent.

The floor, walls, chairs and tables, toys, cooking pots and dishes, clothes and electronic appliances would be disinfected, a government statement said.

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Covid-19 workers in China douse entire flat with disinfectant while owner is away

Bedsheets, clothes and pillowcases could be disinfected first and returned to the patient or treated as medical waste, the statement said. Unopened food in the refrigerator may be disinfected and retained, while products that have been opened must be treated as medical waste.

In other words, it is a textbook “terminal disinfection” procedure to thoroughly remove pathogens from an environment, just as a hospital ward does between patients.

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