While it may be possible to get sick by touching surfaces with the virus, the main way the virus spreads is thought to be person-to-person contact, according to the CDC. The big threat here isn’t pasta boxes; it’s other people.
So the first thing you want to do is minimize your shopping trips (or consider delivery). “If you can get it down to once every week or every two weeks, that’s great,” says
Anne-Marie Gloster, a lecturer in the nutritional science program at the University of Washington. And as much as possible, shop at off-peak times, says
Joshua Petrie, an assistant research professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health. Some stores are limiting the number of shoppers inside at once, or marking every 6 feet along the checkout line, to show customers how far apart to stand. This is good. The emptier, the better.
Should I be sanitizing my groceries once they’re at my house?
Probably not. There’s a lot we don’t yet know about the coronavirus, but touching infected surfaces “doesn’t seem to be the major way this virus spreads,” Petrie says.
“I am not recommending disinfecting your groceries,” Don Schaffner, a professor of food microbiology at Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and host of the podcasts
Food Safety Talk and
Risky or Not?,
told Vox. “This seems like being overly cautious. We don’t know of any cases of Covid-19 transmitted by food, nor of any cases transmitted by food packaging.”
