Cleaning during a viral outbreak is not a task to be taken lightly. While cleaning, in general, is meant to keep your business orderly and germ-free, cleaning takes on a new meaning during a viral outbreak. When a virus is being passed around and difficult to contain, stepping up the disinfection process in your cleaning should be considered.
How to Clean During a Viral Outbreak
A viral outbreak could be anything from a tough case of the flu in a school or child care facility, a Norovirus outbreak in a hospital or health care facility, or an outbreak as we’ve experienced with the COVID-19 virus. Viral outbreaks happen, and there are measures you can take in your workplace to help disinfect your environment and reduce the spread of illnesses. Let’s take a closer look at how to clean during a viral outbreak.
What Should You Clean During a Viral Outbreak?
Maybe the question isn’t what should you clean, but what shouldn’t you clean. Because while the usual surfaces in your workplace – like desks, countertops and tables, door handles, and restroom fixtures – should always be wiped down with a disinfecting solution, all other surfaces will need to be addressed as well during a viral outbreak. Areas that might have been cleaned on a less consistent basis – from the legs of furniture to desktop tech and equipment – now need to be put into the rotation more often.
Viruses can linger everywhere in your work environment, so places that aren’t cleaned often and on a consistent basis, need to be cleaned more often to reduce the spread of contaminants. A tougher cleaning solution can also be implemented to provide virus-killing power that mild cleaners can’t tackle.
How Each Virus Impacts Cleaning
When we suggest cleaning your workplace on a more regular basis, that time frame can depend on the type of illness you are tackling. For the flu, regular cleaning should still be done on a routine basis, but a business might want to include addressing places that get touched regularly, on a daily basis. Consider putting out sanitizer for employees and visitors along with disinfecting wipes to encourage people to keep door handles and desk spaces clean and disinfected often.
When something like Norovirus spreads in a workplace, an overall cleaning every day can be considerably beneficial to the health and safety of your employees and clientele. You might even want to clean your often-touched surfaces repeatedly throughout the day until the seriousness of the illness passes.
With something easily spread like a COVID-19 virus, more serious measures will need to take place in your office or workplace. Cleaning, as usual, should continue, while stepping up the disinfection process to an hourly basis or as a workspace is vacated and prepared for the next group to occupy it. Providing hand sanitizer for employees and guests is imperative while distributing disinfecting wipes for constant cleaning can greatly reduce the contamination from the surfaces it’s used on. In this type of viral outbreak in a business environment, a great way to help tackle these tough germs is with electrostatic fogging.
After your work facility is cleaned as usual, the electrostatic fogging process is implemented to make certain all the work surfaces are disinfected – from a work table and chair, to the walls and door handles, and all the nooks and crannies in-between.
Disinfecting During a Viral Outbreak
As we mentioned before, viral outbreaks happen. What’s important is you take the measures to assure the health and safety of your office or work team. Keeping people from getting sick, keeping them from spreading the illness to others, and keeping them from missing work are all very important. Taking these disinfecting and cleaning steps above can significantly help your business stay ahead of the outbreak and provide useful measures to reduce a virus spread amongst your team and the visitors entering your work environment.
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Your Dedicated Disinfecting Cleaning Team
When it’s time to bring in some help to keep your business clean and disinfected on a regular basis, look to a professional cleaning team to take care of this for you. Turn to trained experts when you want your office or workspace cleaned right and in an expert fashion. Learn more about our commercial cleaning services for almost any work environment. You can read more about electrostatic and fogging disinfecting, too.
We also have a helpful checklist you can look over when you are ready to start interviewing your new cleaning crew. Our professional cleaning staff is bonded, insured, and maintains OSHA compliance. We would be happy to clean it for you. Please contact us online or call us at 571.451.0441 for answers to your questions and to schedule your janitorial cleaning appointment today!
