As fears over coronavirus continue to increase, many are wondering about how the virus affects food.
“There’s absolutely no evidence that you can get COVID-19 like you would a foodborne illness like salmonella,” Dr. Barbara Ingham, a Professor and Food Safety Specialist at University of Wisconsin-Madison, tells WTMJ. “It’s not at all like that, it’s a respiratory illness occurring in your lungs.”
That’s good news for restaurants trying to push take-out.
“If you’re approaching a restaurant or any other business, physical distancing is still in place. The other thing to do is wash your hands. So if you handle the container of take-out food, bring that home and then just wash your hands after handling the container and before you would serve the food onto a plate or something.”
And when it comes to groceries, Ingham says there’s limited risk there as well.
“Wiping down containers of food is not an unsafe practice, but it generally isn’t needed. In order to get sick from that container of food, you’d have to actually take the droplets and you’d have to transfer them directly into your mouth or into your nose and that’s so unlikely.”
The best thing to do is wash your hands before and after putting groceries away and again before and after preparing a meal.
For the full interview with Ingham on Wisconsin’s Morning News, click in the player above.