AT THE moment there seems to be a total panic in Britain about Covid-19, commonly referred to as the coronavirus.

While I am not downplaying the danger in any way, I would like to point out that basic hygiene is the first line of defence to stop the spread of any infectious disease.

I am stunned and shocked at the replies I receive regarding thorough and regular hand washing; for a lot of people this seems to be a concept they are not familiar with or consider overrated. It is anything but.

If we touch anything that is contaminated (and most door handles, lift buttons, ATMs, the handles of supermarket trolleys will be), then go on to touch other objects or other people, we are spreading germs.

We touch our face regularly, around 23 times per hour, rubbing our eyes, nose, etc, and this is how the virus enters our bodies.

So that is why regular hand washing is so important, and by hand washing I mean with running water and soap.

The temperature of the water is not relevant, though soap does tend to lather a bit easier if the water is warm, but even cold water is effective.

The scary thought of “have some people never washed their hands before” and "is basic hygiene in the UK really at such a low point that we need the threat of a pandemic to wash our hands?" crossed my mind.

I was shocked to see the run on items like toilet paper, liquid soaps, pasta, long-life milk in the shops, to the point where supermarkets had to ration how many each customer could buy.

There is absolutely no need to panic if liquid soap runs out — a bar of soap will do the job as well, or if you don’t have soap, a cheap option is washing up liquid.

We know the coronavirus is an enveloped virus, meaning it has a lipid outer layer, a fatty protective layer, so anything that is a detergent will break that layer down.

The whole panic buying is very counter productive. People are buying items a lot of food banks rely on as donations, like UHT milk, tinned food and pasta, so this makes life even harder for people who are already struggling to have enough to eat.

In a lot of supermarkets there is no toilet paper left — also an item food banks need.

During a crisis like this, we should actually be more human and think about the poorest in our society and their suffering, not take away from them but step up our donations to food banks.

Coming back to hygiene, we lose thousands of people every year, to everyday respiratory and gastrointestinal viruses and the flu.

Some people are frail, be it due to age or problems with their immune system or following severe illness or major surgery. Every-day germs that are in the environment all year round can kill somebody who is frail.

A lot of those deaths could be avoided if we all would practise some basic hygiene, wash our hands regularly and thoroughly with soap and running water.

Also we should have the common courtesy of sneezing and coughing into a tissue and not over others or on our hands — where we spread the germs to the next item we touch — if we don’t have a tissue at hand, we should use the crock of our elbows.

It’s not complicated, and it is basic hygiene – in the past it was simply known as manners!

So if we could all wash our hands a bit more often, we can stop the spread of any infectious disease, not just Covid-19, and keep ourselves and others healthy.

We should do that even if we show no sign of illness, because people with immunity can still be carriers and are often the worst spreaders of infections.

By doing these simple things we protect ourselves, our families and those vulnerable people who we will not ever meet but who rely on us being responsible to stay well and stay alive.

Dr Adrian Heald is an NHS consultant physician.