Why has the controversial household sterilization become a "standard operation" for local epidemic prevention and control?

Recently, a video of "killing at home" by the anti-epidemic personnel in Suining, Jiangsu accidentally leaked out, stirring the nerves of many netize.

In fact, arranging epidemic prevention personnel to enter the homes of positive infected people to "kill" has been carried out in various places since the outbreak of the new crown epidem.

The recently popular "home disinfection" is actually a type of "terminal disinfectio.

In 2021, Guangzhou CDC conducted a retrospective investigation on the "terminal disinfection" of 347 confirmed cases reported as of March 14, 2020 in the "Chinese Journal of Disinfecti.

In addition, for some areas, the results of "terminal disinfection" will be made public as an achievement of epidemic prevention and contr.

On May 10, the official account of the General Office of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government also mentioned: "Initiating household disinfection is an important part of the entire epidemic prevention and contr.

Outside of mainland China, the main application scenarios of "terminal disinfection" related to COVID-19 positive infections are in public places such as hospitals and nursing institutions, the purpose is to prevent subsequent patients from being infected by microorganis.

But in China, the coverage of "terminal disinfection" is differe.

In 2015, the national standard "General Rules for Disinfection of Foci of Foci" pointed out that "terminal disinfection" refers to a thorough disinfection of the foci of infection after the source of infection leaves the foci of fo.

This means that the disinfection of the residences of patients with infectious diseases has corresponding rules and requirements long before the new crown epidem.

Shortly after the outbreak in Wuhan, that is, on March 9, 2020, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention released a series of technical documents related to the prevention and control plan of the new crown epidem.

Among them, the "Guidelines for Disinfection Techniques for Specific Sites" (hereinafter referred to as "Disinfection Guidelines") pointed out that the objects of terminal disinfection include pollutants (blood, secretions, vomites, excrement, e.

The "Disinfection Guidelines" requires that after the case is hospitalized or died, terminal disinfection should be carried out after the nucleic acid test of asymptomatic infection turns negative, including: living room floor, wall, table, chair and other furniture countertops, door handles, patient meals ( Drinking utensils, clothes, bedding and other daily necessities, toys, toilets including toilets,e.

A hard-to-follow guide

Therefore, the "terminal disinfection" of spraying disinfectant into the homes of positive persons actually has technical guidance documents as early as the beginning of the outbreak, and it is a work that requires the high cooperation of the patients themselv.

A member of a rescue team who is participating in the disinfection work in Shanghai told Badian Jianwen that for the "terminal disinfection" that needs to be entered into the house, the professional requirements of the executor are very hi.

He also bluntly said, "Disease control thinks that you are ineffective or excessive killing, and urban construction thinks that the ecological balance is destroy.

Therefore, for more than two years since the new crown, although there have been guidelines, due to the lack of operability and the uneven professional level of disinfection personnel, the status of private residences after the disinfection work has been completed has become a random eve.

Many netizens have He disclosed the property losses suffered by his family due to "terminal disinfection" after he was infected, which also in disguise enhanced the bad perception of the epidemic prevention and control personnel in Suining County when they performed "terminal disinfectio.

Taking textiles such as clothes and bedding as an example, according to the aforementioned "Guidelines for Disinfection", medical wastes need to be disposed of in a centralized mann.

The author of the control wrote about his confusion in practice: treating clothing as medical waste, "it is difficult to be accepted by othe.

If the method of incineration is not adopted, circulating steam, boiling disinfection, and soaking in chlorine-containing disinfectant are recommended in the pl.

Post-cleaning and other disinfection methods will cause varying degrees of damage to the clothes of the si.

”

In addition to clothing, "the requirements for terminal disinfection in the prevention and control plan for other valuables of sick families also have similar problems, and corresponding alternative disinfection methods are urgently needed to deal with the actual implementation of terminal disinfecti.

" The paper wrote Ro.

Compared with the complex steam, soaking disinfection, and high-end ethylene oxide disinfection recommended in the guide, the widely used disinfectant spraying method in the disinfection of sick homes in this round of epidemic is more convenient, quicker and more popul.

Of course, in the actual work process, considering the possible damage caused by chemical disinfectants, another member of the disinfection team also mentioned that he and his teammates usually do not treat the surface of clothing and textil.

Once the light is on, it may disappear after two days, so you can leave it alo.

"

On the other hand, in the current law, China does not have provisions on what organization and how to compensate for the loss of private property caused by the sterilization of sick hom.

In the aforementioned thesis of the disease control personnel, he wrote: "From the "Infectious Disease Prevention and Control Law" on which the disinfection behavior is based, the law does not stipulate that the disease control agency should return to its original state after carrying out disinfection behavior; from the "State Compensation Law" to Look, the disinfection behavior of the disease control agency is not an administrative illegal a.

In civil law compensation, the disease control agency is not at fault for carrying out disinfection, nor is it a statutory no-fault responsible party; the sick person is the beneficiary of the disinfection behavior and cannot be a civil servant The main body of compensati.

To sum up, the disease control agency or disinfection personnel do not need to bear the responsibility for compensation caused by reasonable disinfecti.

”

However, "in specific practice, in order to avoid possible disputes, the disease control agency should fully communicate with the patient before disinfection to obtain their understanding and support; for those who do not cooperate well, the administrative department may require the patient to submit a complaint to the disease control agen.

Application for terminal disinfection, or the disease control agency takes the initiative to issue disinfection instructions to the patient, and if the patient cannot meet the requirements, compulsory disinfection is carried out in accordance with the "Infectious Disease Prevention and Control La.

"

Wipe or spray, disinfect or not?

What about other countries and regions?

Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, told Eight Points Jianwen: In Hong Kong, disinfection is generally limited to public plac.

Jin Dongyan introduced: "If someone is diagnosed in an office, they will find a professional for disinfecti.

In the early days, spray disinfection was us.

Later, it was found that using spray in the room would damage many work equipme.

At present, it has been changed to the method of wiping the surface with disinfecta.

Sanitize the environme.

”

The World Health Organization's "Considerations for Cleaning and Disinfecting Environmental Surfaces Against COVID-19 in Non-Healthcare Settings" also mentions: "Routine spraying of surfaces indoors is not recommended for COVID-19 Sanitiz.

If using a sanitizer, it should be wiped with a rag or wipe soaked in the sanitiz.

”

Regarding the sterilization of positive infected persons after transfer, Zhang Yujiao, a professor at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in the United States, told 8:00 Jianwen: "Because there is still a lack of data on the coverage and dosage of disinfectants, most of the current sterilization can only be count.

Doing it with your eyes closed has a very limited effe.

Not only that, but most of these disinfectants may also cause damage to objects and even the human bo.

This is also the reason why other countries in the world rarely use this kind of indoor and outdoor large-scale disinfecti.

method to fight the epidemic is one of the main reaso.

”

However, considering the reality of home isolation, there are also chapters in the documents of the disease control departments of various countries that guide residents to clean and disinfect their own homes, but most of these cleaning and disinfection are carried out by the residents themselves as the main operato.

In the US CDC document, there is a section dedicated to how to clean and disinfect after there are patients in the fami.

The document pointed out that the main operator of such cleaning and disinfection is the infected person himself, "when the infected person can complete the cleaning by himself", or the co-resident, "when the patient himself cannot complete the cleaning and disinfectio.

According to that document, after an infected person leaves or recovers, "always use disinfectant safely" when cleaning the area where the infected person is within 24 hours; from 24 hours to 3 days, only cleaning is required, and no additional disinfectant is required; and wait until When entering these areas for more than 3 days, there is little need for additional cleaning, just routine cleaning as elsewhe.

Similar instructions are included in the New Zealand Ministry of Health's COVID-19 pandemic general cleaning and disinfection advi.

Home cleaning is also mentioned in the Singapore Ministry of Health document - cleaning and disinfecting (infected) frequently touched surfaces after the home isolation period, washing clothes and sheets, and setting aside items that cannot be disinfected , "Do not use them for at least three days after recover.

For such disinfection, the operators are the infected and the reside.

If they have difficulty in killing themselves, they can hire a qualified relevant company to "properly disinfect these item.

In Germany, Lu Mengji, a virologist at the Medical School of the University of Essen in Germany, told 8:00 Jianwen that there is no public institution-led killing in Germany, "the main reason is that there is currently no direct evidence that surfaces can transmit the new coronavir.

"Public policies such as interventions need to weigh their inputs and benefits," Lu Mengji explained to Eight Points: "In Germany, we believe that the new crown is mainly transmitted by aerosols, and the contact transmission through surfaces is very sma.

Probability events, the relevant evidence is insufficient, so killing is not mandato.

Instead, Germany's epidemic prevention policy has high requirements for air circulation, requiring regular ventilation in public places such as schools, or using exhaust machines to reach 7 times per ho.

g.

Inheritance from human beings is a very unlikely event

The main reason for sterilizing the residences of positive infected people is to fear that the virus attached to the room and furniture surface will spread the epidemic to other people who enter the ro.

In the early days of the epidemic, there was some data from the laboratory to support the transmission of the virus on surfac.

For example, the virus can survive on surfaces such as plastic, stainless steel, glass, ceramics, wood, cotton and paper for 4 to 7 da.

However, in July 2020, Rutgers University microbiology professor Emanuel Goldman published their research on the survival time of the new coronavirus on various surfaces in The Lancet and concluded: There is very little chance of transmission through inanimate surfaces, which "only occurs when an infected person coughs or sneezes on a surface and someone else is exposed to it shortly (within 1-2 hours) after coughing or sneezi.

" on the surfa.

"

At the end of the article, Goldman wrote: "I believe that contaminants that have not been in contact with infected carriers for extended periods of time pose no measurable risk of transmission in non-hospital settin.

A more balanced view is needed to curb Excessive behavior that would backfi.

"

On April 27 this year, a group of University of Michigan scholars published a new study in Nature's journal "Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology" by sampling air and surfaces on and around several university campuses and The testing, combined with COVID-19 infections on campus, assessed the probability of COVID-19 transmission associated with environmental exposure in the real wor.

Ultimately, in that paper, the researchers concluded that the probability of infection after contact with a new coronavirus-positive surface is very low, only 1 chance of infection per 100,000 contacts, which is 1,000 times lower than airborne transmissi.

In this regard, Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, explained to Eight Points Jianwen that, first of all, the survival time of the virus on the surface of the object is limited, from the moment when the infected person's droplets fall on the surface of the object, to the next person who comes into contact with .

It, over time, the risk of infection is decreasi.

Not just on ordinary surfaces like express envelopes or boxes, even in cold chain conditions, the decline is only slow.

And Zhang Yujiao further explained: "Viruses, unlike bacteria and fungi, can't survive outside the body for a long time, so although sometimes you can test positive, many positives are just from the remaining viral RNA fragments, The virus itself is de.

A positive surface test is not the same thing as being infectio.

On March 22, at a press conference held by the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that in the past two years of new crown prevention and control, it has been found that the new crown virus may be transmitted through "material transmissio.

way of transmission, but not the main mode of transmission of the epidem.

This pathway can be cut off simply and effectively by washing your han.