We have all lived through the recent Covid-19 pandemic. And the associated lockdowns and related regulations. There have been tragic deaths, unprecedented upheavals, huge costs including health, personal, mental, social and economic costs. There have also been controversies. The current period may be a very good time to review a few things and to see what lessons might be learned. Much of this borders on political commentary and so we will clearly avoid those areas. But hand hygiene is a pretty medical matter and one we do feel able to tackle.
The Cochrane Reviews are what we call meta-analyses. They collate and review existing published research. In general they are quite well thought-of since they select quality research and produce unbiased findings. A recently published Cochrane review looked at hand hygiene.
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6/full
This Cochrane review (link above for your independent perusal) looked at 19 separate published international studies involving 71 000 people. These studies considered typical respiratory illnesses including influenza and Covid-19.
- They considered hand hygiene to be the recommendation and use of regular hand washing and or hand sanitiser.
- They found that hand hygiene reduced the number of respiratory infections by 11-14%.
- This is considered a modest but significant risk reduction.
In the past, and during the Covid-19 pandemic, there was much debate and controversy about which measures really helped and which did not. But it now seems fairly clear. Hand hygiene does help. It does not help hugely but it does help.
It would appear that there is scientific evidence to support the use of good hand hygiene (frequent hand washing and or use of sanitiser) in the context of a respiratory pandemic.
Written by Dr Colin Burns
