6 Tips To Create Your COVID Cleaning Plan
COVID-19 can live on your mobile phone for 28 days
In exactly the same way that simple hand washing breaks down the lipid layer holding the virus together, we also need to manually clean our facility Touchpoints, using the right wipe, the right surfactant or disinfectant, and the right cleaning process for the right amount of time. New research from CSIRO scientists has uncovered that the virus that causes COVID-19 can live on surfaces such as mobile phone screens and ATMs much longer than previously thought.
The right plan to keep your facility hygienically clean can be achieved by rethinking your cleaning plans to focus on HIGH TOUCH surfaces in HIGH RISK Areas.
Think as if you have COVID-19 right now.
The first thing you should do when wanting to take cross contamination seriously is to presume your residents, staff and visitors are currently at risk. We need to understand that your facility is the newest patient as COVID-19 can survive on surfaces for up to 3 days. With this new understanding that our facility itself could be infected, it's essential that we develop a way to clean and disinfect its Touchpoint surfaces thoroughly, even when we have limited staff.
Identify the High-Risk Areas and TouchPoint surfaces
Take a close look at what areas within your facility have lots of people passing through touching the same surfaces. Hand rails and lift buttons in public corridors. TouchPoints in public toilets, Taps, Fridge handles, Microwave panels & bins, chairs and tables in shared dining areas. TouchPoints in personal workstations (particularly Nurses stations ) where multiple staff share keyboards and computer mouses. These surfaces are the most important surfaces to keep clean as they are touched multiple times per hour by multiple people.
Increase cleaning frequency
Thirdly, increase the frequency of cleaning from weekly to daily or from daily to hourly. Depending on how many people are moving through your facility and touching your TouchPoints. Increasing the frequency of your cleaning will minimise the chance of them touching an unclean surface. To do this you may need to consider having disposable wipes available so that all staff can help keep their areas clean.
Reschedule and validate your cleaning
Once you know what surfaces need to be cleaned more often, schedule your areas to be cleaned using our iClean digital cleaning management program. This system can also be used to validate that cleaning has been done properly, at the right frequency, by a trained and certified cleaner.
Train all staff to be able to help keep TouchPoints clean
With many front line cleaners in healthcare settings not coming to work at the moment you may need to find alternative ways to keep your TouchPoints clean. Using disposable ready-to-use wipes that can be used by all staff, you should be able to keep your Touchpoints clean even when cleaning staff are hard to find. Just make sure you have the right wipes on hand and your staff know how to use them.
Ensure hand washing is easy for all staff
If soap and water is not available everywhere use our TouchPoint Alcohol Hand and surface sanitiser wipes. These can be used to sanitise hands and also sanitise TouchPoints in personal surfaces likes keyboards, computer mice and mobile phones.
For help creating your Covid cleaning program, implementing and training your staff, please call us today on 02 9838 7740.
Watch Dr Ruth Carrico share her concept around seeing hospitals as the ‘New Patient’ and how cleaners perform an integral service to providing care for that patient. Log in to iClean Conf today and share with your team.
Watch Dr Ruth Carrico’s session from iClean 2020 sharing her concept around seeing hospitals as the ‘New Patient’ and how cleaners perform an integral service in providing care for that patient.
Log in to the iClean 2020 Conference today and share with your team.
