Chinese State Media Urges People To Flush Used Loo Roll

Chinese people are being urged by experts quoted in a state-controlled newspaper to put used loo roll in the toilet and not in a bin in order to fight the spread of the coronavirus.

Global Times is a daily tabloid newspaper closely linked with the Chinese Communist Party where it often takes the party line on local and international issues.

In the report urging Chinese people to “improve sanitation habits to reduce Covid 19 transmission risk” they said that certain “unhygienic sanitation habits” need to be reduced in order to reduce the risk of further transmissions of the virus.

They said these included no longer “flushing the toilet with the lid open” and also “putting a trashcan beside the toilet bowl to dispose of used toilet paper”.

Credit: AsiaWire/Screen Grab
Toilet Habits featured in the Global Times, the Chinese-language version has been known to have a pro-Communist Party of China slant, attracting a nationalistic readership since its inception in 1993. When launched in 2009, its editors claimed that the Global Times’ English-language version took a less nationalistic stance but a decade later, under editor-in-chief Hu, the newspaper maintains an editorial line indistinguishable from that of other state-run media.

The report quoted Sun Hui, a respiratory physician at Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital, who said: “Used toilet paper has lots of bacteria, which may cause pollution and transmission if people don’t regularly deal with it.”

He added that the position also told the Global Times yesterday (Tuesday) “Virus and bacteria (that used toilet paper contains) can grow quickly at the favourable temperature and humidity.”

Those who still want to use bins, they should make sure they had one with a cover and plastic bags with sealing strips, and noted in Shanghai all the public toilets for men had now removed their bins to minimise the risk of Covid 19 transmission, citing a report by the Xinmin Evening News.

In the toilets for women the bins will now be emptied more frequently, the report said.

With regards to closing the toilet lid, Feng Luzhao, a researcher of infectious diseases at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, was quoted urging people to close it as the virus was found in excrement from infected people, and that flushing without closing could result in the formation of particles in the air that could transmit the disease.

He added that it was a “minimal” risk and that only occurs under some extreme circumstances”.


To find out more about the author, editor or agency that supplied this story – please click below.
Story By: Michael LeidigSub-EditorWilliam Mcgee, Agency: Asia Wire Report

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