Thursday, September 24, 2009

Swine flu and anti-bacterial gel

The BBC reports:
A Dorset prison has removed anti-bacterial hand gel pumps after an inmate is thought to have got drunk drinking from them.
This gel is now everywhere.

I don't want to spoil anybody's fun, but as swine flu is caused by a virus, does anti-bacterial gel do anything to prevent its spread?

2 comments:

Mark said...

Yes it does.

Apparently it kills 99.99% of bacteria and enveloped viruses, which includes flu. It is significantly less effective against un-enveloped viruses such as norovirus (still kills 90% of it, but that's not much use)

Jonathan Calder said...

Thanks.

I'd better start drinking it then.