Corona is on the rise again… Some people are uncomfortable with “Enjoy your food” [수민이가 화났어요]

“good appetite.”

This is a common greeting heard in restaurants. When a customer orders a menu item, the staff puts the food down on the table and says, “Enjoy your meal” and “Please let me know if you need anything. ” Do customers really appreciate this kind of greeting? It can vary depending on the customer, but there are several customers who are unhappy with this.

This is because as soon as the worker puts the food down on the table and says, “Thank you,” the saliva that comes out of the worker’s mouth spreads chan not only for the food but also for the surrounding area. Customers are exempt from the damage.

Especially, with the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more people are becoming aware of this situation. This is because during the Corona period, we learned how quickly and widely the virus spreads through the air when people talk or cough. In places like Japan, restaurant waiters sometimes wear transparent masks, but regular restaurant workers in Korea are rarely seen wearing masks. In Korea, most employees who work at the food markets of department stores wear transparent masks.

Mr. Kim, an office worker in his 50s, said, “The distance between a restaurant worker’s mouth and the food is only 30 to 50 cm,” and “All the worker’s saliva is going to land on the food.” He said, “I hope we can create a food culture that doesn’t say unnecessary goodbyes.”

The recent increase in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases also raises these concerns.

According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency on the 4th, the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients this year has decreased since reaching a peak (875) in the first week of February, but it has been showing a clear rebound since about a month ago.

The number of patients hospitalized in medical centers after being infected with COVID-19 was 63 as of the fourth week of June, but the number jumped from 91 in the first week of this month to 145 in second week to 225 in the third week. . It has increased 3.57 times in three weeks.

Whooping cough (百日咳), which means ‘cough that lasts 100 days’, has also been popular for the past four weeks.

Whooping cough is a serious respiratory disease caused by Bordetella bacteria and is classified as a class 2 infectious disease by law. The incubation period is 4 to 21 days and is characterized by paroxysmal coughing, the main route of transmission being droplets.

An official from the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said, “When you cough or sneeze, droplets of saliva and nasal mucus spread around you, and the germs inside them also float in the air like usually less than 500 micrometers in size, and there are large droplets in the air within a radius of 2 meters “It stays for a while and then falls to the ground.”

Representative infectious diseases caused by droplet nuclei include coronavirus, tuberculosis, measles, and smallpox.

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said, “Infectious diseases with cold symptoms, such as COVID-19, are mainly spread and infected through droplets, and the risk radius is about 2 meters of a cafe, so it is necessary to be careful.”

At the same time, US health authorities warn that people who are within 1.8 meters of an infected person are more likely to be infected with COVID-19.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its guidelines related to the COVID-19 outbreak and introduced them to the public, saying, “If you are within 1.8 meters of a person infected, droplets or particles from the infected person may fall. on someone else’s face or enter the body through breathing.” “You can,” he explained.

Reporter Kim Ki-hwan kkh@segye.com

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