Since mid-April, several federal states and individual cities had spoken out in favour of making masks compulsory. Some municipalities have already issued regulations independently, e.g. for public transport and municipal facilities. After all, it was first in Saxony that the regulation to wear masks in shops and in local traffic was introduced on 20 April, followed by the other federal states within a few days. Since 27 April, the wearing of nose-mouth protection by means of masks or an adequate textile barrier has become mandatory nationwide or is about to be introduced.

Additional protection with disposable gloves

In addition to face masks, disposable gloves are often worn to protect against infection with Covid-19. However, experts are increasingly strongly advising against this, as the gloves do not offer more protection against the virus than healthy skin. Instead, they tend to tempt the wearer to wash his hands much less frequently, so that sooner or later he will reflexively put on the germ-contaminated gloves.

At the same time, the skin under the plastic starts to sweat a lot. The warm and humid climate not only favours the growth of micro-organisms immensely, but also causes the skin to swell and open its natural barriers for bacteria and viruses. Although Covid-19 is a disease of the respiratory tract and there is currently no risk of infection with the corona virus through the skin, disposable gloves allow staphylococci and streptococci, among other things, to enter the body through sweating, which can lead to purulent inflammation of deeper skin layers.

Hand hygiene – the be-all and end-all

Hand hygiene is and will always be a constant.

As soon as you wash your hands carefully, you rinse off the corona viruses. Corona viruses are enveloped viruses and can be inactivated with soap and water and not only with alcoholic hand disinfectants, unlike unenveloped polio, rota or noroviruses.

Apart from keeping your hands away from them, hand washing remains one of the most important recommendations of the Robert Koch Institute. Because, for example, on a mobile phone that you touched while wearing the germ-contaminated disposable gloves, microorganisms will still remain active for a long time afterwards. These are then absorbed again as soon as you later reach for the device without gloves and then again into your face.

Gloves only make sense if you are treating highly infectious patients, e.g. in emergency medical services. However, paramedics also remove the gloves professionally immediately after the operation, i.e. they make sure that the outside does not touch many objects or their own skin unnecessarily, and disinfect themselves before and after the operation.

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