What can we do to protect our eyes against COVID-19

The World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11 declared Coronavirus (COVID-19) a pandemic, and the situation in the United States is getting worse, what we can do to protect ourselves?

According to WHO, we may reduce the risk of infection

• Clean hands frequently with alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water

• Cover nose and mouth when coughing and sneezing with tissue papers or flexed elbow

• Avoid close contact (1 meter or 3 feet) with anyone with cold or flu-like symptoms

But there is still a risk of infection through our eyes, what we can do to protect our eyes?

1. Say no to contact lenses, wear eyeglasses, avoid COVID-19 virus through eye infection.

2. Wash hands frequently, do not use our hands to rub our eyes, especially when our hands are dirty.

Be sure that we don't use our dirty hands to rub our eyes, because eye conjunctiva is exposed outside when there is a virus on hand, and we rub our eyes, we are likely to be affected because the virus goes through eyes.

3. When you are outside, wear eyeglasses for better protection

Another effective way to protect our eyes from infection is to wear eyeglasses, so we can avoid our eyes directly exposed to open areas.

If we wear eyeglasses, we can avoid droplet transmission through our eyes. Even if we are not short-sighted, we shall wear Plano eyeglasses to protect our eyes.

In the meantime, clean eyeglasses are very important. We shall wash our hands and our eyeglasses when we are back home. Take off the eyeglasses, wash it in the clean water with soap. Don't forget to use a clean and dry cloth to wipe clean the frame and the lenses under one direction. Or you can use eyeglasses cleaning machine to clean your eyeglasses.

Do not use alcohol-based or strong acid disinfectant to clean eyeglasses, which will harm eyeglasses. Besides, do not use hot water to clean eyeglasses, hot water will harm the coatings of the lenses.

4. Only wear my eyeglasses, never borrow eyeglasses from others or wear any others' eyeglasses.

Don't borrow our eyeglasses from others to prevent cross-infection. After we clean the eyeglasses, we can put them back to the eyeglasses cases if we don't need them for a while.

We all hope that COVID-19 will be over soon. Let's protect ourselves, stay at home, stay safe, stay strong, and pray the outbreak will be soon under control, life will be back to normal in a short time.