Coronavirus: Cleaning your phone might be one of the best ways to protect yourself more

Don't wash under water though, that one cry.

Nyi Nyi Thet | February 12, 2020, 08:27 PM

The national discourse on protecting yourself from the coronavirus has basically boiled down to wearing a mask or not wearing a mask.

It has been covered extensively, you can read the latest update on this here.

Here's what might not have been touched on as much.

Handphones.

Director of Medical Services Kenneth Mak, when addressing the many letters on social media, gave a slight tip near the end of the conference.

"The best form of advice I can give you is to defend yourself is washing your hands regularly, frequently, with soap and water, and also to be mindful of the things you commonly touch.

The most common thing that you touch is your phone, and you might want to make sure that you clean the surfaces of the phone as well as you touch it.

Subconscious, we often do that, but these are our important things to make sure you protect yourself."

Which makes sense. If your phone is incredibly dirty.

Even after you have cleaned your hands, Phua Chu Kang style, if your phone is dirty, your hand's gonna get dirty again.

But definitely clean your hands of course.

In fact, according to scientists at the University of Arizona, handphones carry 10 times more bacteria than most toilet seats.

While the numerical certainty of that stat tends to differ:

If you've ever used your handphone while in the toilet, everybody for sure, your phones going to be very dirty.

So do take caution to clean it more thoroughly.

Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images