One of the easiest ways people can help to reduce the spread of coronavirus is to regularly wash their hands, and there’s now a new iPhone app available to remind them. While the virus outbreak continues to wreak global havoc, the emphasis on keeping safe appears to be coming down more to individual action, than anything else.
Coronavirus is now officially a pandemic and following the continued escalation in the US, President Trump declared the situation a national emergency. While ways to test for the virus are being improved (including a new website helped by Alphabet and Google), there are a number of ways in which individuals can help to reduce the likelihood of them contracting the virus. Some of the more commonly touted ones include social distancing and washing your hands more frequently than usual.
In terms of the last point, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides very clear guidelines on when and how to wash your hands to help stem the coronavirus spread. These include washing your hands after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing, as well as after visiting public places. In addition, each time you wash your hands, you should do so with soap and water, and for at least 20 seconds. One way to ensure you follow these guidelines is by proactively getting into the habit of frequently washing your hands throughout the day, regardless of what’s happened in between. To further help with that, there’s now a “Wash Your Hands!” app available to download through the App Store for iOS users.
How To Use The Wash Your Hands! App
The new app is nothing much more than a simple reminder service, although in this sense, that’s all you need. The user can instruct the app on how often they would like to be reminded to wash their hands, and the app will follow those instructions by providing a “nudge” at those times. In addition to the frequency of the reminder, the app also lets the user decide a start and end time for each day - helping to avoid you being reminded during the night. A last, but highly useful feature, is the inclusion of a hand-washing timer. This makes it perfect for ensuring the hand-washing is adequate enough, and in line with the CDC’s recommendations.
In reality, there’s no specific reason why you need to download this app as most phone’s nowadays do come with an option to set a recurring reminder. Therefore, those concerned about downloading and installing another app (especially in this data-hungry era), can avoid this one if they want. However, the app is designed to add a level of automation to the process which makes it ideal for those who want to wash their hands more often, but are concerned they will forget and prefer not to mess with their phone’s settings. Unfortunately, the Wash Your Hands! app is currently only available on iOS, so Android users will need to search for an alternative reminder service (or use the phone’s built-in clock or Google Assistant features) to keep their hands clean during the coronavirus outbreak.
Source: App Store