Colonel Sanders will no longer be hawking his secret recipe for fried chicken as "finger lickin' good" ... KFC says it's suspending the slogan after 64 years.

The move came Monday, nearly 6 months after the novel coronavirus started sweeping the globe and health officials started urging people to stop touching their faces to slow the spread. Better late than never?!?

KFC says finger-licking "doesn't feel quite right" in today's environment and it's dropping the slogan in many countries.

Across the pond in the United Kingdom and Ireland, KFC is simply blurring out the "finger lickin'" part of the slogan on buckets of chicken ... as opposed to scrubbing the phase entirely.

The good ole', finger-licking days will come back eventually -- KFC says its famous phrase will return when the timing is right.

Let's go, scientists ... hurry up with that vaccine!!!