Do you still have to wipe down groceries & packages if you're fully vaccinated?

If your household has been fully vaccinated, do you still need to wipe down packages/groceries? I know the rules of mask wearing/social gathering with other people depending on who’s vaccinated, but nobody talks about risk of surface transmission. I’m sure many of you will say you stopped wiping down groceries months ago. :rofl: My household is not fully vaccinated, so it’s not relevant now, but my Mom asked me and I was like that’s a really good question.

My understanding from the CDC is that they are no longer recommending wiping down groceries because the risk of virus transmission from surfaces in exceedingly small.

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After awhile I realized it was easier to wash my hands after handling groceries when I brought them in and even when getting them out of fridge or shelves. Once fully vaccinated that is one thing I am going to totally stop worrying about.

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We do the same. Just wash our hands constantly.

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This is what I expected to hear that it’s not necessary anyway. I still wipe down every single thing. It ads a maddening amount of time to put stuff away. The only thing I stopped doing is hiding the cats away so they wouldn’t get near the bags and disinfecting the floor where the bags were and my disinfecting the soles of my shoes :grimacing:

Interesting question. Once vaccinated I will still wash off some things, like individual yogurt cartons that I hold when I eat. I will no longer clean the floor underneath the bags, which I do but find it makes me feel a little over the top.

You got me with the cats being locked away though! I never thought of that one! Honestly, mine are so lazy that they just watch me work in the kitchen in a judgmental way.

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I never did wipe everything down after the initial week or two. I do wash my hands a lot snd use hand sanitizer when soap and water aren’t available.

I don’t believe even Fauci sanitizes things he buys as the inhaled transmission is really how most folks get infected.

I’m more relaxed now that I’m fully vaccinated, even tho I’m sad our states case numbers and positivity rate is climbing with our >91,000 visitors/day. I still am mostly a hermit but not as nervous doing grocery shopping and going to pharmacy and other errands. Our mayor has now opened weddings outdoors to 100! Yikes! I get that the wedding industry wants it but I really hope we aren’t having multiple superspreader events. :frowning:

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I never have, and don’t recall it being recommended.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/23/health/groceries-takeout-coronavirus-wellness-scn-trnd/index.html

FDA:

Again, there is no evidence of food packaging being associated with the transmission of COVID-19.

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Yep, we never wiped down groceries. Didn’t do it even back at the start last year.

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Towards the beginning of the pandemic you might remember there were a few stories about cats and lions at the zoo getting COVID so naturally my cats to torture me started sneezing all the time out of the blue around that time, and I as losing my mind. So that’s how the putting the cats away from the groceries started. Now you never hear about cats getting COVID, weird. My cats haven’t sneezed since. :crazy_face:

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We stopped doing that about a month into lockdown. All fresh fruits and veg was washed anyway. And I figured that unless I was unlucky enough to get the one box or can that had been coughed all over, and wasn’t sensible enough to wash my hands after putting away the groceries, then I couldn’t do much more beyond that.

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That’s awful. I feel for the restaurants and the wedding industry, but these events affect the whole community including schools. Our schools just opened fully two weeks ago and now here comes spring break, and I’m worried that community transmission will ruin everything and maybe for college too in the fall. Our numbers are all going up in the past two weeks.

We had two weddings we were supposed to attend last year—both canceled! I know many other folks who had to cancel plane tickets to weddings and are still holding the travel credits.

It just seems wrong to be opening more while covid incidence numbers & variants are increasing.

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Dr. Fauci says that vaccine doesn’t prevent to be infected or transmitting covid. If you are vaccinated and you get covid your illness will be mild. I don’t know about surfaces transmission, but, I just clean groceries the first two months of the pandemia.

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We never did wipe anything down, but I always wash hands well after putting away the groceries. Especially with relatively early reports that the virus lasted less than 24 hours on most surfaces, I figured everything would be virus-free after a day or two anyway.

The biggest change my grocery-shopping behavior is that now I no longer take several steps back from people who wear face shields but not masks. Those people used to annoy the heck out of me as they also tended to be types that would step right up next to me at the grocery store.

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We never wiped down the groceries. We did cut down the number of trips to the market for a while (my husband likes to go every day), but stopped that fairly early on too. I wear a mask, social distance and wash my hands a lot. I am always very careful not to touch my face. But I am not a fan of hand sanitizer. I only use it when absolutely necessary.

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You can stop. It probably wasn’t necessary in the first place, but we didn’t know. The virus appears to be mostly transmitted airborn.

Interestingly, in New Zealand, which was totally free of the virus, there was a small outbreak. One of the infected people worked doing airline laundry. The theory is that shaking out the linens caused virus to go into the air, then she breathed it in.

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For a month or two we left things out a day or two before touching and put away (except cold food had to be handled). Then washed our hands a lot. Then when it sounded like most transmissions were via air we were less cautious.

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We stopped wiping down groceries mid-summer. I just wash my hands after handing them.

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I’ve never heard it recommended that you wipe down groceries, so I never did it. I do always wash my hands after coming back home from any kind of shopping. I do wipe down equipment at the gym before and after use.

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