Covid anxiety

[bill12345]

Hi, i am from adelaide australia and i am 17 year old who has been diagnosed with mild OCD and Anxiety. We have just come out of a 3 day lockdown after a cluster broke out last week and it has increased my anxiety heavily. This is due from when today, my dad had to fill up his car, and i realised it was at the petrol station where a week ago a covid case had been discovered. Obviously it was closed, cleaned and then reopened and i stayed in the car because i was too scared to get out. I’m just so worried now that i might get covid because i was at that place but it would have any left if it was allowed to reopen right

[MidnightOil]

Hi bill12345,

These are stressful times and it's understandable to feel anxious, but I'm sure that places which have been found to have had covid cases are cleaned and checked for everyone's safety. All that we can do is to do our part and follow the government guidelines as well as we can, and be informed. There is lots of information out there about what Australia is doing to manage covid which may help your anxieties.

I hope that you are doing well and feel safe.

[romantic_thi3f]

Hi bill12345,

Fellow adelaidian here so I thought I'd jump in. Just yesterday I went to a shopping centre that had a recorded case of covid case as well and I definately felt some anxiety too.

When you said 'have any left' what are you referring to? With Covid the majority of the cases are spread through air-droplets (coughing, sneezing) and there's low low cases of covid being spread from 'surfaces'. If it's surface transmission it has to be someone with Covid touches it and then someone else touches it basically straightaway. So it doesn't survive too long on surfaces anyway but they share that they've done a thorough clean to ease everyone's mind.

I hope that sharing this with you helps - I know that learning about covid has actually helped me with my own anxiety so hopefully this can help you too. You're not alone in your anxiety and hopefully you'll find some good support here.

rt

[elsewhere]

hi bill,

I have anxiety and underlying conditions that are risky for covid and live in melbourne, so I have spent a LOT of time this year very anxious about covid - I totally understand the feeling, and ended up doing a lot of reading about transmission of covid during my lockdown time!

Firstly yes, you can be confident that once it has been opened again it has been cleaned and the staff tested by that time. As RT said, air transmission is more likely than surface transmission, and even inside a shop, it only stays in the air for a matter of hours, not days. Even then, if you are only in the shop a few minutes, masked and socially distanced, the chance of tranmission is still low. The chance of transmission while outside or if the space has ventilation is much much lower - basically only a risk if you are closely face to face with an infected person for 15 mins+. Wearing masks further reduces any risk.

So in short, the place was safe, and getting out of the car, outside, is certainly safe. From our experience in Melbourne, the safety measures like masks when recommended, washing your hands, keeping distance and making sure spaces are well ventilated, and any other recommendations that happen about avoiding gatherings when told to, works actually very well to keep people safe. The reason we had a lot of cases is because some of those measures took too long to put in place. But the SA govt has been very careful in their response, has learned from the Melbourne experience, and there is a very, very low number of cases in Adelaide compared to total population. So you can be confident that if you're following the guidelines you'll be ok.