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Are Street and Passage Disinfections Useful in Preventing COVID-19?
Reza Sadeghi1, Mahmood Reza Masoudi2, Narges Khanjani3, Mousa Bamir4
1 Department of Public Health, Sirjan School of Medical Sciences, Sirjan, Iran
2 Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Rheumatology, Sirjan School of Medical Sciences, Sirjan, Iran
3 Department of Neurology, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran
4 Department of Medical library and Information Science, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran
| Date of Submission | 14-Aug-2021 |
| Date of Acceptance | 18-Nov-2021 |
| Date of Web Publication | 13-Dec-2022 |
Correspondence Address:
Dr. Reza Sadeghi
Department of Public Health, Sirjan School of Medical Sciences, Sirjan
Iran
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/ijehe.ijehe_24_21
How to cite this article:
Sadeghi R, Masoudi MR, Khanjani N, Bamir M. Are Street and Passage Disinfections Useful in Preventing COVID-19?. Int J Env Health Eng 2022;11:16 |
How to cite this URL:
Sadeghi R, Masoudi MR, Khanjani N, Bamir M. Are Street and Passage Disinfections Useful in Preventing COVID-19?. Int J Env Health Eng [serial online] 2022 [cited 2023 Oct 4];11:16. Available from: https://www.ijehe.org/text.asp?2022/11/1/16/363368 |
COVID-19 is a contagious human threat that has swept the world's population.[1] The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020.[2] Prevention strategies, including personal protective measures, social distancing, and environmental surface cleaning, have been implemented to control disease transmission.[3]
One way to fight the virus is disinfecting surfaces. During the COVID-19 epidemic, disinfection of all city streets and alleys was carried out by district municipalities.[4] However, serious questions were raised about this method, and in practice, some experts not only did not approve this method as effective, but also stated that in addition to wasting resources and energy, it causes destruction.
These experts believe that the purpose of disinfection in the control of COVID-19 is to remove the pathogen from the surfaces that people come in contact with, while in general, in disinfecting urban and rural streets and passages, most of the disinfectants are used on surfaces that people do[4] not have much contact with, and therefore this type of disinfection has little effect on reducing disease transmission. Furthermore, disinfection should be done intermittently, otherwise the surfaces will get contaminated again and again, and are likely to infect other people. On the other hand, conventional disinfectants have a limited operating time and are usually effective between a few minutes to a few hours.[5]
Health-care providers have an important role in addressing emotional outcomes (e.g., insecurity, confusion, and fear), as part of the global health emergency and widespread public pandemic response.[6] Meanwhile, disinfecting streets helped to calm people psychologically and this was a positive point in this action.
In fact, it can be concluded that disinfection of places and devices that people come into contact with, such as trading centers, elevators, ATMs, subway lines, bus stations, buses, taxis, gas stations, handrails, and seats in public places is necessary.[7] However, improper use of these disinfectants in places that do not require disinfection, such as streets and passages, is not useful, but may be harmful to human health and have toxic and dangerous effects on the environment. In the current situation, the most important issue to deal with in the corona virus pandemic is to inform the public how to deal with and protect themselves against COVID-19 without stress and fear.[8]
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
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