The state’s health officials know you probably have your hands full trying to keep things together through the COVID-19 crisis. The last thing you need is an unnecessary chore like scrubbing down your groceries:
We have no evidence to suggest that COVID-19 is spreading through food at all. Not through take-out orders, groceries, or produce. When you return home from the grocery store, please thoroughly wash your hands, but there is no reason to try to disinfect your groceries. And please, don’t put disinfecting chemicals like household cleaners on the food you’re going to eat.
The advice comes after social media posts advising people to disinfect everything from produce to boxes of Cheerios. Instead, they write, wash your hands and beware “disgusting droplets.”
“One thing we know for sure is that it spreads easily from person to person through tiny droplets in the air after someone coughs or sneezes,” the post from the Washington State Department of Health reads. “Most of this spread happens when someone has symptoms, like a cough. These disgusting droplets can travel for up to six feet.”
“It’s important that we don’t come within six feet of one another, so we don’t inhale any of those droplets if someone coughs,” the officials advise.
Grocery stores remain open as a designated “essential” business. Social distancing practices include markers in checkout lines so shoppers can have enough space and limits on the numbers of shoppers allowed inside a store at any one time — though CHS has yet to see that type of restriction applied at any grocery other than the E Madison Trader Joe’s. The big stores have also implemented “at risk” shopper hours and personal grocery bags can only be used if you bag your own purchases. Use of masks or gloves by grocery workers, meanwhile, appears to be a personal decision.
The state health department recommends having your groceries delivered, if you can. However, most grocery delivery services around Seattle including commerce giant Amazon have not been able to keep up with demand. Online grocery order “delivery windows” are few and far between right now around the city.
Officials are also backing up industry claims that grocery distribution of goods continues mostly at normal levels and that shelves should remain stocked through the crisis.
“Deliveries to grocery stores are continuing steadily, and farmers, ranchers, and food processors are producing plenty to meet our needs,” officials reassure. “There is no need to worry about shortages, and no need to stock up, other than to make sure you don’t have to leave the house more than once each week.”
While early runs on stores left Capitol Hill and Central District groceries short on essentials including toilet paper, flour, and eggs, the stores are mostly less picked over now. However, some more peculiar items like tofu remain a hit or miss proposition.
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But what if someone coughs on the groceries or coughs into their hand and then touches the groceries? I thought that the virus can last on surfaces up to 3 days? What if you order groceries delivered and the driver has it but is asymptomatic and gets some infected droplets on your groceries? So many unknowns. I’d rather be overly cautious and wash my groceries with soap and water than risk touching a surface that is contaminated. No harm in doing it and I am also washing hands a lot.etc. I don’t see the harm in doing it.
I read virus lasts up to 17 days on surfaces
@Olga…..what you say is highly doubtful and not in line with what public health experts are saying. You are making people more anxious by spreading this misinformation.
@Mimi…..If your delivery driver is really asymptomatic, then by definition he/she is not coughing or sneezing, so is very unlikely to get the virus on your groceries. Yes, it is theoretically possible for an asymptomatic “carrier” of the virus to infect someone else, but from what I have read this too is quite unlikely….I don’t think anyone knows for sure. That said, no, there is nothing wrong with washing your groceries….whatever makes you more comfortable during this uncertain time.
This advice confuses me. Why wouldn’t glass or plastic food packaging be just as likely to carry germs as say, the handle on the grocery cart? Far less likely to be handled multiple times- yes, but still placed on the shelf, and shuffled around a few times by other grubby shoppers. For example, I usually check the expiration date, requiring a fair amount of turning, rotating, searching to find. I assume others do too. I’m not ashamed of giving my milk jug a 20 second soapy caress.
I made a grocery run to Safeway on Madison last night- what a shit show! Very few people respecting personal distance, obliviously centering themselves in the aisle, and so on. It would have been nice to see management make some effort to facilitate the necessary social measures- particularly in the checkout lines. Or, like Trader Joe’s, limit the number of people going in at one time.
God I hate Safeway.
Don’t believe this Governor on anything. Wear mask
I agree Safeway needs to step up to the bat and get with the program. I started going early on Tuesday and it wasn’t crowded. I’m a senior and was glad they started this but they need to monitor who is going in.
I’ve heard that at least currently, stores may not be able to refuse service based on age at any given time, but are more so asking shoppers to respect which times are for seniors. I think this could be better publicized, and people could be asked to not come in. I personally will avoid all senior times as long as I know them in advance or am told of them when I show up. They seem to be first thing in the morning, but may vary. So civic-mindedness plus enforcement if legally possible would be best.
The last time I was at Central Co-op they had started instituting the same 6 ft exterior queuing as TJ’s including a door monitor to limit occupancy.
I went to the Madison Whole Foods last Monday (for the first time ever, actually), and there was an employee in the garage with a walkie-talkie controlling admittance for capacity. Also marked 6 feet lines at the garage elevators as well as the checkout lines. It worked smoothly except that the checkout line the bread, which meant a frequent dance as people tried to maintain separation but pick up a needed staple. I waited until I was actually in line to grab bread.
They did a much better job than the nothing response I saw from Safeway and low effort from QFC.
As a clinical microbiologist, the WA State Department of Health advice is, as always, spot on. There’s a lot of information about this novel coronavirus hitting the media but none of it has been woven into a cohesive narrative of disease transmission. Yes, virus particles can remain viable on non-porous surfaces for days, but is that sufficient virus to actually infect you? This is the essential question. Likely not. Unless you lick the packaging repeatedly. You could be into that. Preventing disease transmission is about mitigating the areas of greatest risk. It’s similar to wearing seat belts in an automobile. Do they prevent death in EVERY single accident? No, of course not. But do they prevent serious injury in the overwhelming majority? Yes. If you want to wash your groceries – go for it! There are plenty of nasty ass people in this world (using the scientific terms). But please do not feel paranoid about this virus on your shoes, or your groceries or your Amazon packages. Just wash your hands! Be safe!
You see countries with firehouses of disinfectant spraying down streets and up the sides of buildings too. What are their populations doing to get infections from the walls 6ft on buildings I wonder.
Please be kind to non-seniors in the grocery store during the hours set aside for special shoppers. That time slot is also set aside for immunocompromised people. A person can have MS, Lupus, a heart condition, diabetes, an immune deficiency or other health conditions and be young. I have had an immune deficiency since birth. It’s painful to be confronted by people because my disability is invisible. You don’t know for sure why younger shoppers are there. Please think a minute before rushing to judgement and assuming the worst about people under 60 with invisible disabilities. We are at risk every day and we are trying to survive, just like you are.