Six people were infected in one meal! Can boiling the dishes and chopsticks before eating really disinfect them?

Confirmed cases in Shanghai involved 4 restaurants in Beijing

The nucleic acid test results were all negative, and 3 stores have resumed business

On November 25, Shanghai reported three new local cases, of which Case 1’s trajectory involved four restaurants in Beijing.

On November 26, the reporter called the above four restaurants, and the relevant staff of the restaurants all said that the restaurants would be closed for one day on November 25. At present, all employees have completed nucleic acid testing, and the results of nucleic acid tests on personnel and environmental samples are all negative.

As of 17:00 on November 26, three restaurants have resumed business, namely "Nuoyan" restaurant in Beixinqiao, Dongcheng District, Solitude Lonely Guesthouse Private Kitchen on Tianze Road, Chaoyang District, and M Natural (Sanlitun) Restaurant in Dayou, Chaoyang District. The person in charge of the "Haijingge" restaurant on Minzhuang Road, Haidian District, told reporters that in order to ensure the safety of customers, it will not resume business on the 26th and will further disinfect the environment.

Beijing has collected 143 nasopharyngeal swab specimens from personnel at various risk points and 306 smears from the external environment, and all the results were negative.

The spread of this epidemic is related to the infected people eating at the same restaurant in Suzhou.

Use boiling water to scald the bowl before eating.

Can you really eat it with confidence?

When it comes to eating in a restaurant, I immediately think of a must-do warm-up operation that many people do before eating: scald the tableware with hot tea or boiling water! They also think that this can disinfect and sterilize, so they can eat with peace of mind...

In fact, high temperature disinfection must have two conditions at the same time to achieve the expected effect:

One is temperature and the other is time.

Generally speaking, boiling water at 100°C for more than 5 minutes can kill or inactivate some bacteria and microorganisms.

There are many types of microorganisms that cause intestinal communicable diseases. Most of the bacteria that often cause acute diarrhea can only die after being exposed to high temperatures of 100°C for 1 to 3 minutes, or 80°C for 10 minutes.

In addition, some bacteria are more resistant to high temperatures.

The higher the temperature, the shorter the time. The sterilization temperature here is mostly the lowest sterilization temperature.

In order to avoid burns, the hot water and hot tea provided by restaurants are usually around 70℃-80℃.

If this water is poured into cold dishes, the temperature will drop even lower.

In addition, many people scald tableware in a few seconds at the fastest and more than ten seconds at the slowest, which is far from enough in terms of duration.

Therefore, boiling the bowl with water before eating cannot guarantee the killing of most pathogenic microorganisms because the temperature and duration of action are insufficient.

To sum up: boiling water before eating cannot ensure disinfection and sterilization. (At most, it can wash away the dust and give you psychological comfort.)

What do you really need to pay attention to when having a meal together?

The first thing to note is to avoid gatherings as much as possible.

If you are having a meal together, what you need to do more than boiling the bowls is to use serving chopsticks and spoons and share the food.

It has been a Chinese custom since ancient times to eat together and pass food to each other. We believe that this way can bring people closer together. However, with a plate of food, countless chopsticks are used to pick up and pass food, and the saliva of everyone at the table will enter everyone's body through the chopsticks and spoons, which can easily create a large number of transmission opportunities for various bacteria and viruses.

The use of serving chopsticks and serving spoons is by no means delicate or distant, but a way to protect your own health and to show care for your companions who eat at the same table with you.

There are many benefits of using serving chopsticks for dining , some of which you may not expect. Let’s take a look:

1. Using serving chopsticks or separate meals can greatly reduce the chances of various cross-infections and reduce the risk of contracting these diseases.

2. Using public chopsticks and spoons and promoting the separate dining system can not only help develop civilized eating habits, but also help prevent diseases.

3. Separate meals can also help people develop good habits of taking meals in fixed quantities and eating on demand, effectively avoiding overeating and thus effectively controlling overweight and obesity caused by it.

4. The advantages of the separate dining system are more obvious for children and students. They can prepare meals according to their needs and eat in fixed quantities, thus ensuring nutritional balance and good growth and development.

5. The separate dining system helps young children or primary school students learn about food, become familiar with quantitative meals, ensure adequate nutrition, and help develop good eating habits.

**It is also recommended to use serving chopsticks when dining at home. **Whether in a restaurant or at a family gathering, every time each person uses serving chopsticks, the chance of virus and bacteria transmission is reduced, and our public health safety is further protected.

Restaurants can adopt appropriate meal-sharing methods based on actual conditions , such as implementing meal-sharing services, implementing waiter-sharing for gatherings, adopting buffets for conferences, and implementing one-portion-per-person dining for fast food and takeout. Public dining should actively promote civilized dining tables, first of all, ensuring that public chopsticks and spoons are available on the table, and also actively promoting separate or portioned meals.

Special note: Separate seats

In addition to the above, in this epidemic, 6 positive cases were detected from one meal, so we need to pay special attention to one point. When eating out in a restaurant, try to sit at intervals.

Source: Jiangsu CDC

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