It's just not that easy, said Linsey Marr, a researcher on the airborne transmission of infectious diseases and a professor at Virginia Tech. That's not to say that COVID-19 can't be spread through touch. "I would say that a handshake is a pretty low-risk thing you can do with respect to COVID." "It really seems from all of the vast amounts of data we've collected up until this point, that the vast, vast majority of infections happen through airborne spread," he said. response to the COVID-19 pandemic, told the Wall Street Journal in an April 2020 podcast that he didn't believe "we should ever shake hands ever again." Thinking has changed 'dramatically'īut after the initial fears - and more research - "thinking around this has changed dramatically since the start of the pandemic," Kissler said. What Will Replace It?" And The New Yorker's " In Memoriam: The Handshake."ĭr. "We had every reason to believe that SARS-CoV-2 would behave the same way."Ī number of articles in 2020 predicted this virus would finally put an end to the germy gesture, including Time magazine's " COVID-19 Killed the Handshake. "There are lots of different viruses, including respiratory viruses, that can spread through handshakes and contact and these kinds of things," said Stephen Kissler, a research fellow in the department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. That by itself is usually harmless, but the threat comes when a person who has just received that germ then touches their face and allows those microbes to get into the mouth and nose, or eyes.Īnd when the COVID-19 virus emerged it was believed it too would pose the same transmission threat.
HANDSHAKER TRANSMISSION SKIN
When someone shakes hands, those microbes may be transferred from the skin of one person to the skin of the other.
Microorganisms that might cause infections can live on the surface of the hand, especially the palm.
That gesture has been a sore spot for some infectious disease specialists long before COVID-19. (Bandar Aljaloud/Saudi Royal Palace/The Associated Press)Īt the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak, with knowledge about the virus and its transmission in its infancy, one area that was of concern for potential spread was through physical touch and the simple gesture of shaking hands. Yet the president seemed to interchange his greetings, fist-bumping some and shaking hands with others. Before Joe Biden departed for his trip to the Middle East last week, White House officials said the president would be limiting physical contact, including shaking hands, as part of COVID-19 precautions.
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