Let’s start with the question of why someone working at a grocery store checkout should wear gloves. Imagine they were not. A customer with COVID-19 comes in, touches all their groceries, then the checkout person touches them. Virus particles could transfer. Then they touch the groceries of the next person; another transfer. These all represent possible infections, so this is a way we’d see virus spread.
How to break the cycle? Well, one way is for the store clerk to wash or sanitize their hands between customers, killing any virus particles. An alternative would be for them to use a pair of gloves and throw them out between customers. The key is that the gloves must be thrown out between customers. Just wearing gloves alone will not prevent the scenario above, you need new gloves for each person. This, and more, is summarized in the following infographic and in greater detail below:
We can ask how this extends to you — should you wear gloves while (say) grocery shopping? During the shopping, you could be exposed to virus particles, and they could get on your hands. If you wash your hands or sanitize them after shopping and before you touch your face, this will avoid infection. You could also wear gloves and then either throw them away after shopping or wash them.
However: it is easy to use gloves wrong. If you wear gloves, and then end up touching them with your bare hands while taking them off, you could be exposed. If you save the gloves without washing them, in principle the virus could survive (this is less likely, depending on how often you shop). Gloves are, in other words, not a substitute for handwashing.
Correction to July 14’s issue: A draft version of an infographic was published which contained placeholder text about including hospitalization rates for children. A revised version can be found below. For those curious, in May, the cumulative hospitalization rate for children aged 0 to 4 was 4.7 per 100,000 and 2.4 per 100,000 for kids aged 5 to 17 (compared to 45.8 per 100,000 for those between the ages of 18 and 49). These rates are for the US. The full text of this piece can be found here.
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Hi! I normally am obsessed with all of these and think they provide great advice. I have forwarded several of these to our school reopening team, friends, family, etc. However, I have to say that this article's headline is misleading. What you seem to be saying is that gloves and hand sanitizer are interchangeable when used correctly. Am I misreading it? Thank you, though, for providing amazing advice through this really challenging time :-)