How cleanliness helps to avoid pandemic?

The recent virus outbreak (Corona pandemic) clear the picture of how a clean and healthy environment is important not only for day-to-day life but also for our businesses. Now people can notice how a dangerous and powerful virus has the ability to be popularized for its surreptitious effects.

Now it’s the time to reopen the economies and businesses to come back to a normal routine. But the question is, Are we really ready to get back to a clean and healthy environment?

For ease back, here are some steps to mitigate the spread of the virus within offices and domestic places. These steps will add extra weight to your routine cleanliness activities.

Here are some strategies that should follow for clean and disinfected surroundings and prepare you and your facility to start work again in a healthy environment.

1: point out the most used areas and touchpoints of your building.

It is obvious how firstly coronavirus can spread especially in contact with infected places. For instance, a person may be infected by touching the area or anything having a virus on it, and also by inhaling infected air particles. So, it is crucial to identify the common touch point and surfaces throughout your workplace and residential areas. Some of them are switches, biometric machines, doorknobs, stair handles, telephones, T.V remotes, tabs, and sinks. These should be cleaned and disinfected frequently to reduce the spread of the virus.

Along with this, there are also some places both offices and homes that have high traffic, such as reception, entrance, exit, common rooms, rest areas, kitchen, etc. these places also need the exact strategies to clean up them by hiring a professional cleaning company. Make it possible to provide good cleanliness practices to visitors before entering your homes and workplaces.

2: Identify non-absorbent surfaces in mostly used areas.

Australia’s national science agency “CSIRO” carried out research on how long Viruses can survive on different surfaces at various temperatures. An experiment was carried out on how long a virus can stay on other surfaces such as steel, glass, vinyl, paper, and cotton at three different temperatures.

These surfaces are examples of potentially high-contact areas, such as glass on touchscreens on mobile devices and supermarket self-service kiosks. Stainless steel is often seen used for doorknobs and vinyl is frequently used on public transport seats and grab rails. Cotton, often used for bedding and clothing, was chosen as a porous surface in comparison to the non-porous surfaces examined.

The results of this experiment show that the virus remains infectious for up to 72 hours or 3 days on non-porous surfaces (i.e. steel, plastic, etc.), and up to 24 hours on porous surfaces (i.e. paper, wood, cardboard, etc.). Given this information, you should also identify your porous and non-porous surfaces and touchpoints, as that will provide a better indication of how often each area should be cleaned and disinfected within your facility.

 3: Schedule the frequency of the cleaning routine.

By following the above two points, high-traffic areas, common touchpoints, should be identified to be cleaned and disinfected. Thus, now you will be in a situation to make a schedule of how and when these should be cleaned and disinfected.

Some areas may only require cleanliness and disinfection once a day, but there are areas that will require more than that, perhaps even two or three times per day depending on traffic and surface type in that area. The cleaning frequencies will ultimately depend on the building type, traffic, soil levels, and surface types.

4.  Place notice boards at the entrance and in main areas.

Place the notice board at the entrance and in the main areas of the building such as in the main hall, rest areas, and coworking places. These boards can be used to mention the instruction and guidelines for staff and visitors. A printed map of the building with color codes to identify the high-traffic areas, and common touch points can be placed at them. A schedule of cleaning routine should also be placed on these boards.

This will help to remember and follow the instructions and also help the cleaning staff to make sure the cleanliness of these areas. All this will leave a good impact on visitors that how this organization is concerned about the health of their staff members and outsiders.

5.  Identify and use effective personal protective equipment(PPE).

Whether you have hired a professional commercial cleaning company, or have an internal cleaning staff, having the appropriate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), supplies, cleaners, and disinfectants are critical to preparing your facility for reopening.

Strategies to use PPE effectively:

●     Identify appropriate PPE. Disposable gloves and eye protection are a must when handling disinfectants.

●     Face masks may be appropriate in areas where social distancing is not possible.

●     Use an EPA-approved disinfectant chemical against the virus. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has listed approved products that should be used against viruses. Depending on the kind of surface, the most appropriate disinfectant can be verified from this list.

●     Be sure to note the required dwell time of the disinfectant. Dwell time is the amount of time that a sanitizer or disinfectant must be in contact with the surface, and remain wet, in order to achieve the product’s advertised kill rate.

●     Use appropriate detergent cleaner. Disinfection is a process that begins with a clean surface. Clean surfaces and touch points with a detergent or soap/water before disinfection. It is good practice for cleanliness.

●     Use microfiber cleaning cloths. This type of cloth is preferable for cleaning since fibers absorb more dirt, grease, and bacteria compared to other cloth; nevertheless, it must be changed often. When using cleaning cloths, it is advisable to have a color-coded system to differentiate between high and low-risk areas to avoid cross-contamination.

6.  Proper training for your cleaning staff.

Develop a training plan to ensure that the cleaning staff has received training for the proper use of disinfectants, detergents, PPE, safety, work practice controls, and cross-contamination prevention. Work practice controls can include how often to wash hands and change disposable gloves, how to handle chemicals and proper use of microfiber towels. It is critically important that the cleaning staff understand how to read and understand a Safety Data Sheet (SDS). The SDS contains information that will help you make sure that the product is used safely.

If you already have a professional commercial cleaning contractor providing routine janitorial services, now is the time to sit down with them and review the scope of work, as changes may be required to ensure that your facility is properly cleaned and disinfected in this new environment.

As the economy reopens, we all need to do our part to mitigate the spread of the virus by creating a safe environment for customers, clients, and employees. As you prepare your facility for a safe reopening, the items identified in this blog are things you should be considering. If we all do our part, we can contribute towards keeping infection cases low, because failure