Coins have been found to harbour the MRSA superbug

Coins found to harbour MRSA superbug - Independent

Extract:

"Coins can harbour the superbug MRSA, researchers have discovered. Health workers have been urged to be extra careful to wash their hands thoroughly after handling change.

"This study indicates that contaminated coins may serve as a potential source for MRSA," say researchers from the Northern Ireland Public Health Laboratory, Belfast City Hospital.
The researchers tested whether MRSA could survive on one-pence coins. Results show that when the coins were contaminated with blood or pus, organisms were able to survive for some time.

The report says that coins are widely used in hospitals, at mobile ward shops, restaurants, pay phones, car-parking payment machines, TV/phone pay card machines and for paying taxis.

"Given that hands are a major source of contamination of MRSA organisms, it may be postulated that money may thus become contaminated with MRSA in a MRSA-positive hospital environment as it is handled or, alternatively, it may become cross-contaminated because of its cohabitation of pockets with MRSA-positive handkerchiefs," say the researchers. "Given that there are approximately 26,359 million coins currently in circulation in the UK, an examination of the survival dynamics of MRSA on money is warranted."

They say that hands are among the most important way of spreading infection: "Because money may provide an indirect route for hand-to-hand contamination, it is important to prevent such cross-infection by washing hands after handling money if a clinical procedure is to be carried out.""

Years ago I went as a volunteer - human guinea pig - to the Common Cold Research Centre (it closed down some years ago) at Harvard Hospital, near Salisbury. This was unpaid - just expenses. The virologists there taught us quite a bit about the common cold and their discoveries about it. Apparently more colds are caught on New Year's Day than any other day because of people going to New Year's Eve parties, which tend to be inside in the warmth, with lots of people crowded together and some will have colds and be coughing, etc. Germs may be transferred to, say, a door handle and then transferred to your hand when you touch the handle. Then if you rub your eye, say, you can by doing that introduce germs into your body through the eye. Alcohol at the party will have opened the pores of your skin and warmed you up a lot. - When you leave to go home, even if you have wrapped up well, you still encounter the shock of the cold air and you get chilled - and when you are chilled, that is when your body's defences are low and so the germs that have entered your system can now get a foothold.

They advised us to try not to rub our eyes, as this was such an efficient and common way of transferring germs from the hand into the body.


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