Why contact with money is the easiest way of getting infected with COVID-19

By Victor Akuma

As a legal tender, the naira serves almost all purposes in our daily routine in Nigeria, starting from the poor to the rich.

Here are some reasons why monetary transactions can help in the fast spread of the disease:

1. Because of its importance in our daily lives, the naira is used in buying foodstuffs in the market and getting change which probably have changed hands thousands of times before even getting to the market woman who we get the change from

2. We go to the ATM to withdraw money which we don’t know who deposited and we are careless of washing our hands when we get home.

3. Some of us while counting money often use our hands to touch the spattle on our lips to make our hands wet, thereby transferring all germs on our hands to our mouth.

4. Most of our market women have also formed the habit of keeping money at different parts of their body, both the sensitive and insensitive parts, it is even a quicker way of welcoming the virus without knowing it.

5. Most of us also drop money at different corners in our homes without knowing how much we are exposing our loved ones who might touch the money, not knowing there’s a virus living on the surface. It is best we keep our cash in our wallets or other less exposed places in our rooms.

The bad thing is that we don’t wash our hands after touching this legal tender and then we go ahead touching different parts of our rooms including our door handles, chairs, television remotes and worst still, our phones.

We are therefore advised to wash our hands when ever we have contacts with money. Even if it takes us washing hands 200 times daily, it’s something worth doing as much as such will guarantee our safety. Take precautions today.