Disinfecting the home after strep

[Crescent Cat]

So I picked up a plague of the strep throat from work. I've most likely spread this plague to my boyfriend who lives with me. I was just diagnosed yesterday and he woke up this morning saying his throat felt odd. So he's making an appointment to get a rapid strep test today.

Anyway, I've started on my antibiotics this morning and I'm assuming the boyfriend will be starting today (I'm fairly certain he has it). Since strep has a tendency to be annoyingly contagious I'm wondering how to best disinfect the apartment.

I've googled it and the advice I got was what I was planning on doing in the first place - washing clothes, linens, and utensils in hot water, throwing away my toothbrush and lysol spraying my apartment.

I'm wondering about ways to disinfect things such as my keyboard, mouse and cell phone without ruining them. Also if there's anything I'm missing.

[Seshat]

Most bacteria can only live a short time without some sort of organic substance to feed on; so cleaning the house is actually enough.

You don't need antibacterials; it's more that you need to get rid of stray skin cells, scraps of food, the sheen of food oils that can stick to crockery and cutlery, and so forth. In fact, if you don't get rid of those things, airborne bacteria will just colonise those surfaces again within minutes. If not seconds.

Give the house a good clean. Give keyboards and phones a wipe with a damp cleaning cloth, and tip the keyboard upside down and shake all the dirt you can out of it. (A child's paintbrush can also help get a keyboard clean.)

Strep loves to transmit itself by making you cough or sneeze, thus making tiny particles of strep-laden moisture that get all over things. Fight it with tissues or face masks. (You can get face masks from the pharmacy, cheaply.)



Edit to add: now a virus is a different matter. Many virii can live just fine without anything to 'eat'. Unfortunately, stuff like lysol does nothing to them.

[trailerparkmedic]

Throw out your toothbrush. Other than that, you should be fine with normal house cleaning (no Lysol needed) for the reasons Seshat gave. I got tons of strep when I was a kid and my family rarely caught it from me--it's not crazy contagious.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I just do a lot of handwashing when one of us is sick, and wipe down everything that has a lot of hands all over it with clorox wipes...keyboards, mice, doorknobs, light switches, etc.

I don't know if it helps. Figure it can't hurt.

[Crescent Cat]

Update - so the boyfriend went to the doctor and they told him that the results would be in on Monday. I don't know what archaic means they're using in that office but evidently they'd never heard of rapid strep tests.

I'm 99% sure he's got it though. I told him that after 48 hours of him starting his antibiotic he should throw out his tooth brush but he doesn't want to. He'd rather boil it. Will that be enough to kill the bacteria?

[surreal20]

Yes, he can boil it to sanitize it if he wants. It will do the trick just fine.

[Food Lady]

Or just soak it in peroxide. Also, wipes leave chemical residue. A solution of 1 T bleach to a gallon of water to wipe stuff down is what I do. It is dilute enough to not harm anything. Liquid hand soap, or any detergent, BTW, destroys flu virus. I know we're talking about strep, but I wanted to interject that viruses aren't always impervious.