Research from India indicated that people who wear glasses are much less likely to become infected with Covid-19 than those without, which appears to support health advice for wearing glasses instead of contact lenses.
Covid-19 can spread in many different ways, one of which is through the spread of germs to the eyes due to touch or friction. According to the new study, published on medRxiv.com and not reviewed by experts, people who wear glasses touch the eyes much less and therefore are less likely to spread the virus that way.
The researchers found that, on average, people touch the face 23 times an hour and the eyes three times an hour. Health officials have advised people who wear contact lenses to wear glasses during the Covid-19 pandemic to prevent the virus from spreading through constant touching.
In the study of 304 adults aged 10 to 80, two-thirds of them men, 19 percent said they wore glasses. The researchers found that this group was two to three times less likely to contract the virus.
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“Long-term use of glasses can prevent repeated eye contact and rubbing,” said the report, citing the eyes as possibly a “Significant route of infection”.
A similar study conducted in China and released last fall theorized that people infected with Covid-19 are five times less likely to wear glasses.
“Our main finding was that patients with Covid-19 who wear glasses for an extended period of time every day were relatively uncommon, which could be preliminary evidence that daily spectacle wearers are less susceptible to Covid-19,” concluded researchers at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, after noticing the trend among patients.
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