Can Gloves Protect You from a COVID-19 Infection?

There are certain essentials that everyone must have in the age of the coronavirus pandemic. Hand sanitizers are among them and you can say the same thing about face masks.

Can gloves be counted in that category as well?

Odds are that you’ve probably seen at least a few people wearing gloves while making their grocery and pharmacy runs and wondered if you need to get a pair too.

Before deciding if you need to pick up a pair of gloves for yourself, please go ahead and check out the information included below.
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The Main Benefit of Wearing Gloves

If you’re considering wearing gloves while you’re out shopping, know that doing so only really offers one main benefit. That benefit is that if you touch an infected surface, the virus will go to the gloves and not your bare hands.

Now, that probably sounds like a good enough reason to continually wear gloves during your trips outside, but that’s doesn’t take into account the potential risks that come with covering your hands.
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Why Wearing Gloves Can Be Risky

According to the Cleveland Clinic, the biggest potential risk you are taking on if you opt to wear gloves is that you could unwittingly lower your guard against the coronavirus.

With gloves on your hands, you may think that you are now completely protected. The problem with that mindset is that it may lead you to become careless.

Instead of refraining from touching your face, you may end up doing so because of the gloves.

Remember that if you touched an infected surface, the virus could still be on your gloves and you could transfer it to your eyes, nose, or mouth by scratching your face. By avoiding gloves, you become more aware that you must refrain from touching your face.

On top of that, you may not remove or dispose of the gloves properly after using them. If that happens, the virus on the gloves could just be transferred to your hands.

Also, the coronavirus could still get to your hands anyway if a rip forms in the gloves that you don’t notice right away.

The bottom line is that if you think wearing gloves will automatically grant you better protection against COVID-19, that’s not exactly the case. In some respects, it could even end up making you more vulnerable to an infection.
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Using Your Bare Hands Will Suffice

There’s no need to wear gloves while shopping because your bare hands will do. Speaking to NPR, Dr. Emily Landon, hospital epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist at the University of Chicago Medicine, says that your skin is sufficient because it functions almost like a “hydrophobic covering.”

The coronavirus will not enter your body through your hands. The virus will just stay on your hands and as long as you remember to wash them before touching your face, you should be fine.
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Conclusion

It’s easy to assume that gloves can protect us better from the coronavirus, but the reality is that they may have the opposite intended effect if the people wearing them are not careful. The best protection against COVID-19 continues to be proper hygiene.