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What Should Businesses Do if COVID Cases Occur at Shared Office Buildings?

What Should Businesses Do if COVID Cases Occur at Shared Office Buildings?

If COVID cases occur at shared buildings, what should businesses do? Shared office buildings don’t need to be closed when a COVID case or two are reported. Work can continue after the buildings are disinfected following the COVID-19 guidelines.

According to GCC FM’s COVID case guidelines, it is critical to keep shared office buildings clean after legal restrictions and lockdown. Moreover, these premises must treat a COVID-19 confirmed case earnestly.

Shared office buildings would usually have many organisations working in those premises, though, with the pandemic resulting in the majority of workplaces working remotely and fewer people commuting to the office, this should in theory reduce the number of positive cases.

However, there might be some occasions where people do need to attend the office building physically due to the nature of their work, and if so, workspaces must be kept clean at all costs.

Even when lockdown restrictions are lifted, office buildings cannot afford to be complacent with their hygiene protocols and need to ensure that safety standards are maintained at all costs.

Although anti-COVID bio fogging cleaning can mitigate coronavirus spread, shared office buildings must follow specific steps to combat the virus.

Prevention and Regulation

The best practice to keep COVID cases off shared office buildings is to mandate regular clean following specified health guidelines.

The procedures to follow are easy-peasy. However, you must endeavour to regulate them to keep the staff from deviating.

Below are things to implement to prevent COVID cases at the workplace:

  • Wearing a face mask or covering one’s face while at work.
  • Maintaining 2m social distancing
  • Track and Trace implementation to scan people accessing the business building.
  • Frequent surface cleaning and focus on the most handled items, including doorknobs, light switches, desks surface, and office hardware.
  • Sufficient hand sanitising facilities across the business premises, especially at the entrance.
  • Create a dedicated room for health officials.
  • Minimise physical contacts by adopting virtual video conferencing.

Before you hire a cleaning service, ensure that their cleaning agents or products are tested for EN14476. It is not every cleaning chemical that eliminates coronavirus, and you are not ready to invest for no result.

You may question the contract cleaner or inspect the product label. Also, hand sanitisers at shared office buildings should contain at least 70% alcohol to get rid of viruses.

Take Action

Since your organisation could not prevent COVID cases at the shared office buildings, the reaction is mandatory.

You must react ASAP to any reported COVID-19 case, but it does not mean shutting down the business. When a case of COVID-19 is ignored or treated lightly, the virus spreads, and it spreads like wildfire.

What should be done for businesses to continue after a reported COVID case at a shared office building?

  • Infected individuals must be moved out of the building immediately.
  • Those that came in close contact must return home to self-isolate.
  • Contact and hire a contract fogging service immediately.
  • Prepare the office buildings; beginning from the office, the reported case was detected.
  • Create a RIDDOR report in accordance with the regulations for Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations.

Action Maintenance

After taking action, what? Sit back, relax and watch? Oops, that’s like inviting more COVID-19 cases.

Understand that the battle against COVID-19 is a worldwide priority; do not underestimate by responding quickly. After you hire a fogging cleaning service, ensure that you maintain regular contact with them.

Meanwhile, fogging effects last 30 days from the last treatment date. During fogging, charged particles create an antimicrobial shield on surfaces and parts of the room touched for 30 days.

In this regard, your business is advised to contact a professional cleaning service provider monthly for enhanced protection against COVID-19 reoccurrence.

What Does Fogging Mean?

  • Fogging comprises electrostatically charged particles that spread through a shared office building in mist form.
  • Regardless of how hard-to-reach a part of the building is, fog covers it and eliminates COVID-19.
  • Fogging takes a few hours and does not halt business activities for too long. You may fog the shared office buildings on non-working days for activities to continue.

How to Select Your Fogging Service Provider

When selecting a service provider, have in mind that not all fogging services offer standard cleaning treatment for COVID-19 cases. To ensure standard cleaning, consider the following in fogging provider:

  • The staff. Is it a team of professionals that can handle severe cases like COVID?
  • Cleaning chemical. Does the provider employ proven COVID-killing chemicals?
  • Documentation. Will the provider present a risk assessment, method statement and completion certificate?
  • Foggers. Is the provider’s fogger designed to combat COVID-19?

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