The New Brunswick government responded to the coronavirus outbreak by enforcing a lockdown to break the chain of infection and reduce its spread to avoid overwhelming health services. For essential services it is important to take every precaution in order to protect the people who use your premises, including your employees, visitors and members of the public.
In the event that your business has a known or suspected outbreak of COVID-19, your employees and other users will want assurance that your premises are safe before they return and that they’ll stay safe while they’re using them.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) is a highly infectious disease, rapidly spreading from one city in China in December 2019 to over 200 countries and territories over three months. With no vaccine or specific treatment, the main advice to prevent COVID-19 is to practice stringent hygiene measures and social distancing.
This includes cleaning and disinfecting surfaces and objects that people frequently touch. Even as the restrictions are lifted, it has become increasingly apparent that additional waves of coronavirus infections will rise. Therefore as people come into contact with others, so we all have to stay vigilant and continue using hygienic practices.
Disinfecting high traffic touch-points
Keeping hands hand clean is problematic when people cough and sneeze into their hands or touch their mouth or nose, providing an easy transmission route for the coronavirus to spread to everything they touch. this provides a scenario where the virus can infect an unsuspecting person when they touch a contaminated surface and proceed to touch their eyes or mouth
In hospitals, schools, social care, offices, retail outlets, hotels, and public transport, there are many key touchpoints that people commonly share, including:
door handles
supermarket carts and baskets
gas pumps
kitchen and dining surfaces
taps, faucets
toilet flush handles or buttons
stair rails, handrails, grab handles and grab rails
recycling areas
vehicles
There’s also a risk of contamination from bodily fluids and toilet sneeze.
The coronavirus (the virus itself is called SARS CoV-2) was found to be present in the faeces of patients and for an average of 11 days after it had disappeared from the respiratory tract.
Toilet ‘sneeze’, the plume of droplets created by flushing, spreads faecal micro-organisms around a washroom. They settle on surfaces such as the seat, floor, walls, unprotected tissue, cubicle and washroom door handles, wash basins, taps and soap dispensers.
Studies in offices have shown that germs can spread from an infected person to the entire office in 2–4 hours via contaminated touchpoints. They all need regular cleaning and disinfecting with approved products to ensure protection from infection.
How to decontaminate for Coronavirus
Cleaning and disinfecting areas and objects play an essential role in protecting people from COVID-19. It’s critical in returning a site to safe use after an infected person has visited your premises.
As a facilities manager, you’ll need to ask the following questions.
How quickly can I get my business re-opened after an outbreak of COVID-19?
Are my premises virus-free and are the surfaces in my premises safe to touch and use again?
What hygiene procedures and virus control measures do I need to put in place immediately?
How do I develop a strategy to implement robust hygiene standards in my organisation?
What do I need to do to comply with changing regulations and how do I safeguard against this happening again?
You may have cleaners that do regular cleaning tasks, but controlling a highly infectious virus causing a pandemic requires a higher level of expertise and control measures that only a professional service can provide.
Cleaning and disinfection treatments
A disinfection service will first survey the site using specialists. The survey will provide a site-specific:
Risk assessment
Method statement
Safe operating procedures
Specially trained disinfection technicians manually clean and disinfect the site using specialist equipment, including personal protective equipment (PPE) and an approved high-level surface disinfectant. They will go through the contaminated rooms and areas systematically cleaning all the key touch points and surfaces.
Disinfecting large and hard to access areas
Manual methods are the first choice to disinfect surfaces, but for combating airborne pathogens and disinfecting large areas that require rapid re-entry of treated areas, fogging is an ideal solution.
Ultra-low volume (ULV) disinfection fogging involves using a fogger machine to generate a cloud of extremely small droplets of a disinfectant liquid. The application of disinfectants and biocides using this method can significantly reduce the number of pathogens both on surfaces and in the air.
These small droplets settle underneath, on top of and on the sides of many objects and inaccessible areas that may be difficult or not possible to reach using conventional cleaning methods. It also reaches a wider range of surfaces than manual cleaning, including textiles.
Rapid ULV fogging and disinfection enables the treatment of large areas in a short space of time to help to quickly break the chain of infection.
Disinfection: Assured Excellence
Professional disinfection services have the techniques, tools and most appropriate products to disinfect areas to make them safe and return them to use as quickly as possible. After our disinfection services are completed you can be assured that your staff, customers and visitors that the premises are safe again.
Ongoing or recurring disinfection plans will provide further reassurance that you are maintaining high standards of hygiene your premises.