With businesses slowly starting to re-open, some shops are taking extra steps to keep customers safe. Jessica Schneider, owner of Junkee Clothing Exchange, decided to install a sink right outside her shop and is requiring every person, both employee and customer, to wash their hands before they can enter.
"It makes them more confident, coming into a store where everybody has to wash their hands before they come in, it makes them more comfortable. The response has been outstanding, people love the sink," said Schneider.
Schneider is speaking with other businesses around Midtown in hopes of adding hand washing stations all around as well. "Reno's numbers are low, but we can get them even lower if everyone could really put into their heads to wash their hands."
Health officials, like Dr. Magrini with Northern Nevada Medical Group, recommend washing your hands over wearing gloves. "Gloves really do give people a false sense of security while wearing them that they are protected and immune from any germs. But you know, touching your face, adjusting your mask with your gloves on is still not protecting you."
Dr. Magrini also spoke on the relatively new trend of mask shaming, or those refusing to wear masks even when asked to. “The point for the push to wear masks in public places is not so much for your own protection, as it is for the protection of those around you. If you are infected or are in the early stages and you don't know it at all, you are actually the most infectious then.”
Proper hand washing seems to be the best practice to reduce the risk of spreading anything, and witnessing someone else doing so is, for lack of a better word, contagious.
"If you see others washing their hands before they walk into a business you are more likely to wash your hands before walking into that business. And good hand hygiene would just help control so many illnesses, not just COVID, it’s a really good idea," said Dr. Magrini.
This is the first hand washing station outside a Midtown business, but we learned that SNC Construction, the company doing the roadwork in Midtown, is donating six hand washing stations to be put up around the Midtown District.
