With a few precautions, you can lower your risk for these viral illnesses
By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
At best, catching a cold or the flu can take you away from doing what you want to for a few days. For people with chronic respiratory conditions, a virus can snowball into a much more serious illness. To reduce your chances of catching a cold or flu, try these tips:
Tips from Michelle Vignari, registered nurse, board-certified in infection prevention and epidemiology and director of infection prevention at Highland Hospital:
“The No. 1 thing recommended is flu vaccination. It doesn’t necessarily prevent you from getting the flu, but it can decrease severity, hospital stays and poor outcomes, especially for those with other health issues like COPD. It’s not too late. Sometimes later in the season, we get an increase in influenza. We’re seeing the worst respiratory season for flu we’ve had. There’s also COVID and RSV.
“We also recommend staying indoors, avoid large crowds and wear a mask if you do go out and about. It is a good way to avoid the spread of respiratory illnesses.
“Cover your cough, wash your hands with soap or with alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
“Clean your environment, like doorknobs. At work, wipe down your desk and phone.
“If you’re sick, stay home. You may think you’re feeling better and will go out but you can still be spreading to ill people, infants and older adults. If you’re improving, we still recommend wearing a mask until your symptoms are completely resolved.
“Overall, use good healthy choices like a well-balanced diet and get plenty of sleep. Do all the things you should to keep yourself healthy.
Tips from Stacey Gibbs, director of Infection Prevention for UR Medicine Thompson Health:
“Practicing good, frequent hand hygiene is important. Washing hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds or using alcohol-based hand sanitizer is especially important after coughing, sneezing and before consuming food.
“Make a conscious effort to avoid touching your face, particularly in public areas if you did not just complete hand hygiene.
“Avoid going to social gatherings, work or public places to prevent others from getting sick especially during the beginning of your illness.”
Tips from physician Az Tahir, MD internal ,medicine in Henrietta:
“There are many ways to increase immunity. There are many supplements that can increase immunity. Also try taking cold showers, cold immersion, red light sauna, exercise and breathing exercises, which may all increase immunity.
“Avoiding exposure to the infection is very important. I suggest washing the hands at least three times or more a day.
“We should also take a shower twice. Most important is when you come from work, take shower and change our clothes.
“Also, keep the house and work infection-free like if possible before leaving the house we should clean our chairs, tables, etc., with them either rubbing alcohol or sanitizer. Also, it’s a good idea to spray Lysol or anti-infective before leaving the house and also when we leave our work, we should do the same thing. We should clean our table and our chair with the rubbing alcohol-based sanitizer and we should spray Lysol if possible at our working place, working room before we leave.
“Wear a mask for example if you’re traveling on an airplane or if people are sick at work, you should wear the mask.”