Environmental News Network - New Study Finds 2 Billion People Without Proper Sanitation at High Risk for Coronavirus

Details: By Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation; 20.May

Without access to soap and clean water, more than 2 billion people in low- and middle-income nations – a quarter of the world’s population – have a greater likelihood of acquiring and transmitting the coronavirus than those in wealthy countries.

Julie Swatson

Without access to soap and clean water, more than 2 billion people in low- and middle-income nations – a quarter of the world’s population – have a greater likelihood of acquiring and transmitting the coronavirus than those in wealthy countries.

That’s the conclusion of a new study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine.

More than 50% of the people in sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania lacked access to effective handwashing, according to the study published last week in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

“Handwashing is one of the key measures to prevent COVID transmission, yet it is distressing that access is unavailable in many countries that also have limited health care capacity,” said Dr. Michael Brauer, a professor at IHME, which currently has one of the world’s leading models of the coronavirus of the pandemic.

Photo Credit: ivabalk via Pixabay

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New Study Finds 2 Billion People Without Proper Sanitation at High Risk for Coronavirus