Grocery Shopping Tips in COVID-19 Revised (March 31, 2020) www.DrJeffVW.com

Hello, I'm Jeffrey van Ling and a family physician from Grand Rapids Michigan. Well, since the last video, we've had a lot of great ideas and a lot of people have weighed in on the growing awareness of the need to stay home and social distancing. doing so and more and more people are under the order to stay at home and not only in my country but around the world today I want to share with you some strategies to make your

grocery

shopping

as airtight as possible and not contract kovat 19 I' I'm not perfect and you're not perfect, just do the best you can and arm yourself with knowledge and a plan.

When you go

shopping

, this may seem tiring or unnecessary, but in a time when our world is turned upside down. of a pandemic they are going to accuse us of doing too much, but deep down they will often accuse us of not doing enough now, when we start here, I want to share with you the data we have from the National Institute of Health that in their laboratory discovered that kovat 19 was detected on plastic and metal for up to three days and on cardboard for up to one day. I want you to see this as the worst case scenario.

Viral particles degrade over time nowadays when we deal with food. I want to use the analogy of imagining that there may be a little shine on the food when you bring it home and our goal at the end of this is to not have any shine on our hands and especially on our face. and with that knowing that that shine dissolves over time and also dissolves with the use of things like disinfectant or soap we are going to talk about how we can bring the shopping to our house without any chance or the best chance we can of not contracting kovat 19 and I want you to see your house as a fortress and our goal is not to bring that or keep it in our house, so in that sense our house is not a barren field and we are not trying to do that. we are just mitigating kovat 19, now consider this with the three day maximum and consider leaving your non-perishable food in a place where you can come back to it later and on a doorstop or in your garage or even in your car, but the perishables that need to be refrigerated need to be brought in, but the dry goods and cans maybe we could leave them out and make them airtight now for the food that needs to be brought in, we'll deal with those today and also some of the non-perishables because they may need them before three days and I want to consider dirty versus clean, this could be considered dirty, potentially contaminated with some of that shine and this could be considered clean and at the end we will get the wrappers and wipe this with disinfectant.

Now, as far as disinfectant goes, I'm going to check with the Centers for Disease Control, they have a great website that will give you all the ideas on what you can use as a disinfectant and and I also want to say before we start that I don't want you be afraid of your food, this is not a foodborne illness, but most kovat 19 is contracted in the community when people get together and when those respiratory droplets are shared and It's possible that those respiratory droplets could land on things like plastic, metal or cardboard and be carried from our hands to our face, so I don't want to rule out the base, but I want this to be as airtight as possible.

I've seen a number of great ideas and, for example, vegetables, let's talk about how we're going to treat them, maybe you could put them in the refrigerator and leave them for that day, considering that they are porous and might just sit in one area of ​​your refrigerator that you could return to in about a day, but we'll also show you how you can wash them. Now you'll see here that I have plastic bags and Plastic bags can be thrown away or recycled, but cloth bags, what I recommend is that you leave them outside your house or in a secluded area for a day or something, maybe You may even be able to wash them, but whatever you do with them, try.

Do not leave them in the most used areas of your home after they have gone to the supermarket. The most important thing now is to stay home, go out only if you must maintain a social distance of at least six feet, and do the best you can. these

tips

to aggressively reduce your risk of contracting kovat 19 in this pandemic like we have not seen in our lifetimes in

grocery

shopping. I think it's wise to use a delivery service if you can pay in advance, avoid tipping in cash, and educate the person. deliver to leave the groceries at your door and this is not just about you but also the delivery guy who is really on the front line so here are some

tips

although if you need to go to the supermarket don't go unless you have to send to younger family members do absolutely everything you can to not bring your children, who may not be as vigilant about prevention in the supermarket, pay with plastic if you can get up - two weeks of shopping if you can to minimize your you need to go back to the grocery store before you go to the grocery store make a plan make a list to decrease your time in the store and while you are in the store commit to buying don't read the labels if you pick something up commit to buying it so you don't put your hands on things that will be left on the shelf when it comes to masks, there was news today that the Centers for Disease Control is considering recommending the use of masks when we go out to decrease their tendency to touch each other. face, that is the most important thing masks can do, it will teach us not to touch our faces and it can also reduce the risk of spreading the disease to others if you go to the supermarket and we are asymptomatic and you still have Kovach 19 and in that sense don't go to the store if you have any symptoms of respiratory illness such as cough, fever or difficulty breathing and when in the store maintain the practice of social distancing without touching your face and wash your hands.

If you can or can bring sanitizer to sanitize your hands after you've done your shopping, then let's take care of some of these foods here and I'm not going to disinfect this surface immediately before I deal with the food because it's my home. and I don't consider my home to be spreading kovat 19, but it's okay for the other microbiome to exist in my home as usual. I'm going to saturate a paper towel in essence. I'm going to do this about what we would get with a disinfectant wipe and as I move back and forth on these groceries, I'm just applying a little bit of hand sanitizer and I'm not going to wash my hands before I take care of the dirty side. but I'm definitely going to wash my hands before getting involved with the clean side here and again, this is just doing the best I can, so with things that are wrapped in heavy duty plastic it's reasonable to clean them and again we're trying to mitigate the worst of the cases here now with items in bags.

I could certainly clean them, but I could also use a technique to store these foods directly and by doing so, I don't have to worry about this packaging here with canned goods, I think. certainly it's reasonable to just wipe them down while I'm dealing with my shopping here, but with those perishables that I bring, let's say, for example, take this chicken, I'm going to need to refrigerate it and I could certainly lightly clean the outside I could also leave it in my refrigerator and not have I'll have to deal with that later, but what I'm going to choose to do is open this up and put it directly into this container.

Here now the chicken is a kind of special circumstance that the chicken can happen. along with Salmonella, so I'm definitely going to wash my hands after I've dealt with the chicken and while I'm at it I want to talk about sterile technique. Sterile technique is something that we use in the medical field to make sure that we don't transmit any disease to our patients while doing things like surgery and these techniques that I'm sharing with you today are kind of an adaptation of that sterile technique and again, They will not be perfect in doing this. and maybe my sterile technique isn't perfect either, but again we're doing the best we can right now while I deal with this frozen pizza.

I don't want to deal with the cardboard here, but I know that inside this frozen food there is I'll wrap it in plastic and throw it on the table and consider it clean because in all likelihood no human hand has touched it for several days and I want to tackle the freezer and while We do not have data on other coronavirus species that have remained stable for long periods of time in frozen situations; In fact, microbiologists store viruses in the freezer, so I think, in the interest of making this airtight, don't just put frozen foods in the freezer assuming you're safe now.

I'm going to use the same technique with this box of cereal knowing that the cereal is wrapped in plastic and I'm just going to throw it away without touching the bag and lastly I have some fruits and vegetables here and we're going to take care of them in the sink okay , so I'm going to leave my paper towel saturated with disinfectant on the counter there and I'm just going to throw these vegetables in the water here now. I'm not that worried about these apples because they're wrapped in plastic, but to be thorough, I'm going to take care of them and clean them well, same with the tomatoes here that I grabbed from the pile of tomatoes in the produce section and I'm going to put my plastic here now this is considered dirty now what I'm going to do is just rinse it under plenty of running water and since the last video I've had the opportunity to consult with some experts from Michigan State University, the department of microbiology and animal sciences. foods and I just want to thank those people who have been invaluable during this process and I'll stop for now and come back to these vegetables because you get the idea.

I'm going to wipe my handle, pick up my dirty bags, wipe down this surface, and then get back to my shopping here. I hope these tips have been helpful, just do the best you can and I want to encourage you to love those you have. You stay at home with a little more of these days and if you must venture to love your fellow human beings a little more with kindness and patience, these are difficult times and I want to encourage you to be part of the solution.