Why Does Soap Fight Coronavirus?

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Now that the coronavirus pandemic is spreading faster, one of the most important recommendations made by specialists is to constantly wash your hands with soap and water. Why is this hygiene chemical so important?

According to the American newspaper The New York Times, the power of soap is generally extremely destructive to microorganisms. Simply, "a drop of ordinary soap diluted in water is enough to break and kill many types and bacteria and viruses, including the new coronavirus", thanks to its hybrid structure.

Due to the molecular structure of this product, they can attack the lipid membranes that some bacteria and viruses have; which are covered with important proteins that are responsible for infecting cells and keeping bacteria alive.

Thus, when people wash their hands with soap and water, they can surround any microorganism on the skin with molecules of the latter. The hydrophobic tails of these molecules float freely and try to evade water; therefore, during the cleansing process they enter the lipid envelopes of certain microbes and viruses and force open them.

"They act like levers and destabilize the entire system," Professor Pall Thordarson, acting director of chemistry at the University of New South Wales, told The New York Times.

For their part, disinfectants that have at least 60 percent ethanol act similarly to fight viruses and bacteria by destabilizing the mentioned membranes. Despite the above, they do not have the possibility of easily removing microorganisms on the skin because they are more resistant to the chemical destruction of ethanol and soap.

But, constantly washing your hands with soap and water if you can expel these microbes from the skin unlike the disinfectant, although the latter can help the lack of hand washing, as long as it has an alcohol base.

So to constantly use soap to fight the coronavirus and other bacteria!