Our phone has been ringing off the hook today with schools, offices and other businesses asking whether we will be providing Coronavirus deep cleans, so they can complete their contingency plans.
We would like to highlight an important cleaning issue which is being skirted around. Have you allocated enough budget for daily cleaning within your school, office, surgery or showroom, to ensure you can reduce the likelihood of viruses like Coronavirus spreading in the first place?
School Cleaning For Coronavirus
It is well known within the cleaning industry that schools never have enough budget for their daily cleaning. We are forced time and time again to reduce cleaning and rotate cleaning within every area of a school to save money. Despite this, schools are looking into deep cleans should Coronavirus be detected within their school. Increased daily cleaning could reduce the need to close schools.
We feel it would be helpful to direct our readers to the following information for the cleaning of schools.
How To Clean and Disinfect Schools To Help Slow the Spread of Flu
In this helpful cleaning guide by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to ‘slow the spread’ of another virus (flu), we see the importance of cleaning regularly touched items on a daily basis.
The article states to “follow your school’s standard procedures for routine cleaning and disinfecting. Typically, this means daily sanitising surfaces and objects that are touched often, such as desks, countertops, doorknobs, computer keyboards, hands-on learning items, faucet handles, phones, and toys. Some schools may also require daily disinfecting these items. Standard procedures often call for disinfecting specific areas of the school, like bathrooms.”
How is Coronavirus most likely to spread within schools?
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, transmission is more likely via person to person spread, with droplets transferring between individuals. They feel that although it can spread from contact with infected surfaces or objects, it is more likely if the following person to touch the surface then touches their mouth, nose or possibly eyes.
As the old saying goes, “Prevention is better than cure”
Where prevention is important, the irony of focusing on a ‘one-off’ clean for when Coronavirus is finally detected seems like too little too late. An important part of reducing the spread of illness is reducing the number of germs, killing germs where possible and limiting likelihood of transfer. We would advise that schools take a look at their cleaning schedules and check whether their school cleaners actually have time to concentrate on cleaning tables, handles, taps, doors etc on a daily basis. It is worth remembering that schools need a good level of cleaning at all times, and not just when an outbreak has already taken hold.
Guidance on COVID-19 for schools & educational settings
The government has provided various documents to help schools and other educational settings deal with the Coronavirus outbreak.Â
