My wife and I returned from a cruise with first-time Covid, first her, then me. Last night, while she was resting, I did the dishes by hand for the two of us. Please tell me if this sounds sufficient.
I picked up her dinner plate from the table and washed it with a very soapy (Palmolive) wash cloth for 8 to 10 seconds, then rinsed in lukewarm water. Same with the utensils. I hit the knife, fork and spoon separately with the soapy washcloth for 5 seconds each, then rinsed. Ditto for the drinking glasses.
The water was maybe 85 degrees. I figure 120 F is better but nowhere close to sterilizing temperature, so the marginal gain is next to nil. I do not use a post-wash sanitizer or bleach. Yes, I could throw everything into the dishwasher, but it’s just the two of us, so handwashing often makes more sense.
My thinking is since there are no stubborn biofilms present, the soap will easily and instantly break the surface tension and the germs will go right down the drain. IOW, the soap is doing the trick by dislodging the germs and washing them away. If the plates were left to dry for hours or days, I could understand more extreme measures, but that isn’t the case with us. And, no, the plates aren’t greasy before I wash them.
Is there anyone in the household who hasn’t yet caught covid? I’m not certain what hazard you are trying to protect against.
Anyway, soap and detergent kill covid. So washing the dishes by hand with ordinary dish soap should be fine, so long as you are cleaning off any crud that germs might be hiding under. Breathing in the kitchen is more likely to spread covid to others in your household than the washed dishes are.
It’s pretty well established at this point that fomite transmission (contracting COVID by contacting surfaces) is a very, very low risk.
I wouldn’t be concerned. If you’ve washed the dishes at all, the risk of spreading it that way is pretty much non-existent. Even if you haven’t, hygiene concerns aside, it’s not exactly a high risk for COVID specifically, though certainly a risk for other diseases (norovirus, which cruises have been notorious for spreading, can definitely spread via the dishes).
The greater risk is the air - people contract the disease by breathing the same air as somebody who has it.
Heh. One of my more sobering thoughts during the early stages of the pandemic was that not only is humanity losing a war against an inanimate object, but we’re helping it along.
If everyone in the household already has COVID, washing the dishes excellently or poorly isn’t going to change anything. Getting more rest is likely to speed your healthy return more than anything involving dishes. Are you bringing other people into the house?
In fact, soap or detergent in reasonably hot water is a fine disinfectant, and actually superior to disinfectant-grade isopropyl alcohol as it will break down and remove nutrient environments (grease, starches) that bacteria could grow in. Water does not need to be scalding hot, but should be at least 35 °C (95 °F) in order to soften food debris as well as to quickly dissolve the surfactants. It is actually as important to dry the dishes thoroughly as it is to clean them, as this eliminates an environment in which viruses can remain intact and bacteria can thrive.
As noted, the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 is primarily spread as an aerosol, and so fomite transmission is not a primary concern. Most virions (infectious viral particles) in general do not survive long in a dry environment, and it would be very unlikely to transmit a viral infection from a dish that has been cleaned, dried, and stored.
Virions are not ‘alive’ in any accepted definition of a living organism; specifically, they do not have any metabolism and cannot reproduce outside of and without the functionality of a live host cell. Some technical definitions of a virus identify it as the infected host cell as the ‘live virus’ and the virion as essentially a spore that transmits the genome, but this is not the broadly accepted view, and from any practical standpoint a virus is an obligate intracellular pathogen that cannot propagate outside of host tissues.
No disagreement here that in the colloquial context “kill” is equivalent to and more readily understood than “inactivated” or “denatured”, and from the standpoint of disinfection, it is a distinction without difference. But from a technical standpoint, a virion does not meet any definition of a “living” organism.
If you are nervous about it, and want to indulge in overkill, the thing to get is called “Steramine.” It is a cheap and simple product used by restaurants to sterilize dishes and surfaces. You can use it to make a spray for countertops and a dip for final rinse of dishes. One $10 bottle makes up to 150 gallons of spray.
As others have said, it is probably not necessary, but if it gives you peace of mind, that’s the way to go. Do be aware that it may stain your kitchen towels blue, so either use it with old cleaning rags or paper towels.
Anecdotally, it’s also good for spraying on insects and works better than most commercial bug sprays.
