If you have pink eye, should you go swimming or sleep with someone who has it?

What makes many people wonder is whether pink eye should go swimming, or is it transmitted through swimming pool water? If a relative is sick, do I need to sleep separately?

Doctor Hoang Cuong, Central Eye Hospital, instruct:

Eye discharge and disease samples will be mixed in swimming pool water. Swimming pool water disinfection chemicals may not be concentrated enough to kill viruses. If disinfecting water with sea salt, the concentration needs to be 20%.

Therefore, people with pink eye should not go swimming to avoid infecting others.

Public places such as supermarkets, cinemas… are also places where infection is easy, especially due to close contact, close distance (from 1 meter) can be infected with the virus that causes pink eye ( This virus is present in saliva). Therefore, people with pink eye also need to avoid going to public places as above during the contagious period.

Specifically, the most contagious ability is when full symptoms appear on days 5-7 of infection, but the first 3 days of infection (during the incubation period) and 3 days after recovery are still contagious. Therefore, the total risk of spreading it to others is about 2 weeks.

Children who are sick should stay home from school because going to class can easily infect their classmates. The US and Europe often give 1 week off for cases of pink eye.

Doctor Cuong also said that it should be noted that pink eye is transmitted through contact, very easily transmitted through the hand-eye contact: the patient’s hand touches the eye, gets infected with germs, then the hand touches other objects and germs are scattered. sick…

Pink eye should be relatively isolated and avoid sleeping with sick people because it is contagious. During treatment, it is necessary to use medication according to the prescription and instructions of a specialist.