W ashing your thoroughly washing your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, or using an alcohol-based hand sanitiser, are key steps to reducing the risk. But with all this hand washing, it’s easy to get dry skin or for existing skin conditions to flare up. Read more: Yes, washing our hands really can help curb the spread of coronavirus What’s happening to our skin? hands is one of the crucial ways we can all help limit the spread of COVID-19. Regularly and The top layer of our skin (the stratum corneum) is our skin’s key protective layer. But frequent hand washing with repetitive exposure to water, soap and skin cleansers will disrupt this layer. Over time, this leads to dry skin, further
disruption of the skin barrier and inflammation. This eventually results in hand dermatitis, or more specifically, irritant contact dermatitis. Who’s more likely to have problems? Irritant contact dermatitis is more common in people who perform “wet work” as they wash and dry their hands many times a day. They include health-care workers (doctors, nurses, personal care assistants), hairdressers, food handlers, kitchen staff and cleaners. They may also be exposed to irritating skin cleansers and detergents. But now handwashing is becoming more frequent during the COVID-19 pandemic, there may be more affected people outside these occupations. Health-care workers, who wash their hands multiple times a day, are particularly at risk of hand dermatitis.
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