photo of woman wearing homemade mask

The all-time mode to prevent COVID-19 is to avert getting it in the showtime place. In that location are vaccines for COVID-19 and they are free to the public, so you should consider getting one.

Yous can lower your chances of getting or spreading the virus by taking these steps:

  • Launder your hands well and often. Use hand sanitizer when you're not most soap and h2o.
  • Try not to bear on your confront.
  • Wearable a face mask when yous go out.
  • Follow your community guidelines for staying home.
  • When you practise become out in public, leave at to the lowest degree 6 anxiety of space betwixt you and others.
  • Don't leave your house if yous don't feel well.
  • Cover your oral fissure with your elbow when you coughing or sneeze, or utilize a tissue.
  • Clean and disinfect places and things y'all touch on a lot.

How Does the Coronavirus Spread?

The virus spreads mostly through aerosol that people send out when they talk, sneeze, or cough. These commonly don't stay in the air for long or go further than 6 feet. Only the coronavirus might also travel through tiny droplets particles that can linger for up to 3 hours and travel farther away. This is why wearing a facial roofing tin can exist important. It tin go on yous from giving it to others as well as helping you avert breathing information technology in.

You might likewise catch the coronavirus if y'all touch something that an infected person has touched and so touch your eyes, nose, or rima oris.

Wear a Mask

Fifty-fifty if yous don't show symptoms, you could carry the COVID-19 virus. People more than two years quondam should wear a confront mask in public or indoors where there'due south a loftier hazard of infection. Look for a mask that:

  • You tin fit information technology snugly over your nose and mouth with no gaps.
  • Yous can necktie it behind your caput or claw information technology onto your ears.
  • Information technology has several layers of fabric.
  • It allows you to breathe.
  • You can wash it without dissentious it.

You tin make your ain no-run up mask at domicile with a bandana or piece of material the size of a bandana (20"x twenty"). Here's how:

  • Fold your bandana in half.
  • Fold each half to see the centre line.
  • Thread the bandana through rubber bands or hair ties. Leave the hair ties about half dozen inches autonomously.
  • Fold the ends of the bandana to meet each other, and tuck one end into the other.
  • Place the pilus ties on your ears to agree the mask over your nose and mouth.

Before you lot put on your mask, wash or sanitize your easily to be sure they're clean. Replace your mask if it gets clammy. When you lot take your mask off, do it from the dorsum and don't touch your face up equally y'all do. Launder your mask in your washing machine to make clean information technology after you lot habiliment it in public.

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Launder Your Easily

Soap, water, and some scrubbing are all it takes to kill viruses on your hands. Y'all probably already know the usual times you should launder your hands, including before and after you handle food and afterwards you:

  • Use the toilet
  • Change a diaper
  • Blow your nose
  • Impact garbage
  • Intendance for a ill person
  • Touch animals or their waste

During the COVID-19 pandemic, y'all should likewise be sure to wash your hands:

  • After beingness in a public identify
  • Before touching your optics, nose, or oral cavity
  • Afterward touching a surface other people have touched, such as an elevator push, door handle, gas pump, or shopping cart

Proper mitt-washing takes v simple steps:

  • Get your easily moisture with warm or common cold water.
  • Utilise soap and lather upwards. Be certain to include the backs of your hands, in between fingers, and under your nails.
  • Scrub for at to the lowest degree twenty seconds.
  • Rinse easily under clean running water.
  • Dry your hands with a clean towel, or let them air-dry out.

Soap and water are the all-time tools for keeping clean hands. Merely when they're not nearby, you can use hand sanitizer. It should be at to the lowest degree 60% alcohol. To use it:

  • Utilise it to your hands.
  • Rub all over your hands and fingers until they're dry.

Don't Touch Your Face

Your eyes, nose, and oral cavity are a direct path into your torso for viruses. Scratch your nose, rub your eyes, or seize with teeth a hangnail, and you let germs inside. You probably touch your face all day long without noticing. Breaking the habit takes practice. Attempt the following tips:

  • Notice the habit. Clothing scented lotion or perfume on your hands so the smell alerts you each time it happens.
  • Give your easily something else to practise. Use prophylactic bands or a stress ball to continue your hands busy.
  • Keep tissues nearby. Make sure you utilise them for itches or a runny nose or eyes.
  • Switch upwards your posture. If your mitt habits are tied to the manner you sit at your desk, for instance, endeavour a new position.

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Stay Home

The fewer people yous're effectually, the lower your chance of infection. When yous stay home, you lot aid stop the spread to others, too. Try to stay out of crowded places. If your community is under shelter-in-place orders, follow guidelines for when you tin can leave.

Keep 6 Feet Abroad From Others

The main way COVID-xix spreads is from person-to-person contact. "Contact" is more than than touching. When someone coughs or sneezes about yous, aerosol from their nose and mouth go into the air. Droplets from a person with COVID-xix have the virus in them. If you breathe the droplets in, the virus gets into your system.

The CDC reports at that place is evidence the virus tin be transmitted if you become inside half dozen feet of someone who is infectious for a full of 15 minutes throughout a 24-hour interval. Information technology had previously been believed the exposure had to be 15 minutes at a time.

To protect yourself, you lot should practice social distancing. This includes staying at least 6 feet abroad from other people.

Don't Get Out if Y'all Accept Symptoms

If you start to have mild symptoms like a runny olfactory organ and headache, stay dwelling house for 5 full days until y'all feel improve. When you lot practice become out, continue to article of clothing a mask for 5 more than days. Get tested as soon as possible. Your symptoms could mean you lot have the infection and could spread it to others.

Also, hospitals and physician'due south offices are dealing with many cases of COVID-19. Going to the medico for mild symptoms will enhance your risk of getting the virus, and make clinics busier.

Call your doctor to get advice on what to do before y'all head to a dispensary or hospital if y'all have more than severe symptoms, such as:

  • Cough
  • A fever
  • Trouble animate/shortness of breath
  • Headache
  • Nausea or vomiting
  • Diarrhea
  • Loss of sense of taste and/or smell
  • Muscle aches
  • Sore pharynx
  • Runny nose or congestion

Sneeze or Cough Into Your Elbow

If y'all sneeze or cough into your easily, you coat them with germs. If you don't cover your sneezes and coughs at all, it rockets your germs into the air around you toward others. Cover your mouth with the crook of your elbow to protect both you and others. Always wash your hands afterward.

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Clean and Disinfect Surfaces

You can also get COVID-19 if you lot touch something that has the virus on it and then touch your eyes, olfactory organ, or mouth. It'south less likely you'll be infected this way, merely it's even so possible.

The virus can survive on plastic and stainless steel for up to 72 hours, so you should regularly wipe down surfaces that you and others touch a lot in your house. These include:

  • Tables and chairs
  • Countertops
  • Light switches
  • Doorknobs
  • Keyboards and touch screens
  • Remote controls
  • Toilets
  • Sinks
  • Cabinet handles

Cleaning and disinfecting are two dissimilar steps. Cleaning removes dirt and germs, but it doesn't kill germs. To kill germs, use a chemical disinfectant on surfaces you lot've already cleaned. Nigh disinfectants you buy in a store should work to impale the virus that causes COVID-19 on surfaces.

To disinfect electronic surfaces or other things you can't disinfect with bleach, read their educational activity manual, or employ an booze-based wipe.

Launder clothes and other washable materials as normal to disinfect them. If you lot're washing clothes or linens of someone who is ill, employ gloves to handle them, and wash your hands afterwards. Avoid shaking out muddied clothes and linens earlier you lot launder them to keep from spreading germs into the air.

Why Is Coronavirus Prevention Important?

Studies evidence COVID-xix is a serious illness. It's important to take steps to preclude the spread of the coronavirus considering:

  • Anyone tin can spread the virus. Enquiry has found that you can spread it even if you lot don't have symptoms or up to ii days earlier symptoms outset.
  • Some people are more likely than others to become seriously ill. This includes older people, people with other medical weather, significant and recently pregnant people, and newborns.
  • If you get very sick from a COVID-19 infection, you may need to exist hospitalized or put on a ventilator to assist yous breathe. In severe cases, you may die.
  • Even if you lot've had a COVID-19 infection, you lot might be able to become sick over again and spread information technology to others.

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Extra Precautions for People Who Are at College Risk

Anyone tin can get COVID-19. But you have a higher gamble of getting seriously sick from it if you:

  • Are 65 or older, especially if you live in a nursing home or other care facility
  • Have asthma or lung disease, although more than research is needed on this
  • Have a weakened allowed arrangement from conditions such as cancer and HIV, or from medications
  • Are severely obese with a BMI over 40
  • Accept type II diabetes
  • Have a serious heart condition
  • Have kidney, liver, or centre disease

If you autumn into ane of these categories, it's especially important for you lot to follow the general safety guidelines. Also, accept these steps:

  • Take all your medications as usual. Don't change your handling plan without talking to your md.
  • Ask your doctor or pharmacist about keeping at to the lowest degree a 2-calendar week supply of prescription and over-the-counter medications so yous can cutting downwardly on trips to the pharmacy.
  • Make sure you're up to date on vaccines.
  • Call your doctor if y'all have any questions about your condition or if you think you lot might have come into contact with the virus.
  • Don't hesitate to get to the hospital if you demand emergency intendance for your underlying condition.

What Tin can Assist Prevent COVID-19?

The FDA has approved three vaccines and follow-upwards booster shots for added protection.

  • The Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine includes two primary shots given 21 days, or 3 weeks, apart. Anyone 5 years old and to a higher place is eligible to get it.
  • The Moderna mRNA vaccine requires two shots given 28 days, or 4 weeks, apart. You take to be 18 or older.
  • Johnson & Johnson's Janssen vaccine requires just one shot. It's recommended for anyone 18 years of age or older.

You tin can get the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna booster shot 5 months after your last primary vaccine dose. People ages 12 to 17 years sometime should get a Pfizer-BioNTech booster 5 months after the concluding dose.

If you've taken the J&J/Janssen vaccine, the CDC recommends taking the Pfizer or Moderna booster shot at to the lowest degree 2 months later your first dose.

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All three vaccines accept proven to be very effective in stopping the spread of COVID-xix and lowering your risk of getting very sick. They're likewise effective confronting most variants. Merely the CDC says information technology's preferable to take an mRNA vaccine if one is available about you.

If you notice any allergic reactions or side furnishings after taking the vaccine, permit your doctor know.