Healthcare professionals should start regularly disinfecting their mobile phones, as well as their hands, to reduce the risk of infection transmission, US researchers say.

The team posed the question why, if mobile phones have become an extension of our hands, don’t we disinfect them more often, especially in healthcare settings?

Their study of ICU nurses found that after they began regularly cleaning their mobiles, the bioburden on both their own and shared phones dropped significantly,

This in turn would cut the risk of infection disease transmission, the researchers surmise in the American Journal of Infection Control.