Here's How You Can Avoid The Flu
The best ways you can protect yourself against the flu!
It's flu season, everyone's coughing and sneezing, wearing gloves when pushing shopping carts and riding on public transportation, walking around with paper face masks, anything to fight off viruses and colds. Rather than improvising, let's find out what's wasted effort and what actually works.
Influenza - the flu - spreads through respiratory droplets. When an infected person coughs or sneezes, these droplets spray into the air and can travel as far as 6 ft. So, within that radius, you can inhale the virus, or it can land on your nose or mouth. When the virus finds a new human host, it can infect cells and cause the flu.
Experts at the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggest several steps to help reduce the spread of viruses and protect you from the flu.
To save you time, we've boiled this down to 5 simple actions:
Get a Flu Vaccine
As the first and most essential step in protecting against flu viruses, the CDC recommends a yearly flu vaccine before flu activity begins in your community.⸢¹⸣ Vaccination can reduce flu illnesses, doctors' visits, and missed days off work.
Face Mask? Or, No Face Mask?
This is a big question. Why hide your face, make breathing difficult, and leave marks on your skin if you don't have to? The CDC doesn't recommend that healthy people wear face masks in public. If you're infected, consider using a mask - upon recommendation of a doctor - in order to prevent spreading the virus to those physically close.⸢²⸣
Disposable paper masks can help to reduce the chances of spreading infected droplets - they should be discarded after each use.
Cover Sneezes & Coughs
Avoid close contact with sick people. While sick, limit contact with others to keep from infecting them. If you have flu symptoms, CDC recommends that you stay home for at least 24-72 hours after your fever is gone. When sick, cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze to prevent any virus from traveling to others.⸢²⸣⸢³⸣ After use, throw the tissue in the trash.
Hand Washing
Health officials advise using soap and water, since the lather can dislodge germs. For healthy people, frequent hand-washing can remove any virus-containing droplets and is one of the best ways to ward off viruses.
Clean and Disinfect
You can get the flu by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then wiping your mouth, nose, or eyes. So it would be wise to keep your home disinfected and clean. The CDC suggests that you can reduce your risk of infection by routinely disinfecting common surfaces in your home to kill flu germs.⸢²⸣
The first 4 steps are easy enough to accomplish, but cleaning and disinfecting your home may be super challenging. Sometimes the best move is bringing in a cleaning professional.
Handyallows you to book local home cleaning services that can save the day. The company connects you with top rated cleaning professionals in your area. All their experienced Cleaning Pro's have been through background check screenings that use credential verification technology to ensure they're the most reliable in the cleaning game.
Handy's website is simple to navigate, with weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly cleaning plans. And their savvy app makes it easy to message your professional, or reschedule your appointment if needed. Plus, if you're dissatisfied with the quality of a service, Handy's Happiness Guarantee assures you that, at no extra charge, they'll send another Pro to make it right.
With all the things you can do to prevent the flu, let Handy help take care of this one for you.
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