The current COVID-19 Coronavirus outbreak is effecting all businesses, schools and universities and shops in the UK.  With people self isolating, business including warehouses, distribution center are having to deep clean their premisies.

How to prevent the spread of COVID-19?

We all need to take the goverments advice.  The current advice is to stay at home if have a high temperature or a new continuous cough.  You should not go to your GP pharmacy or hospital, but stay home and self isolate. Use the 111 online coronavirus service to find out what to do.

Currently the risk in the UK has been raised to high.  As coronavirus may remain viable for hours to days on surfaces made from a variety of materials, cleaning of all visibly surfaces followed by disinfection is a best practice measure for prevention of COVID-19.

Coronavirus Decontamination

Businesses are using this time to deep clean and decontaminate their warehouses.  Speed is paramount when it comes to dealing with any viral outbreak.   If surfaces are dirty, they should be cleaned using a detergent or soap and water BEFORE the disinfection. For disinfection, diluted household bleach solutions, alcohol solutions with at least 70% alcohol should be effective.  Also any EPA-registered household disinfectants with work.

2h Storage Solution offer specialist warehouse cleaning and coronavirus disinfection services. We can offer specialist cleaning and decontamination services to disinfect warehouses and equipment.  We can provide specialist reaching equipment to access the more challenging areas to clean.  And by using industrial disinfectant we can offer high level cleaning for complicated plc and automated systems.

If you have warehouse equipment that needs specialist cleaning with decontamination then contact us today on 01937 585057.  We can help you get your business back up and running as quickly as possible.  This page provides recommendations on the cleaning and disinfection of rooms or areas of those with suspected or with confirmed COVID-19.

What should Employers do?

Advice is being reviewed daily.  Employers should keep up to-date with the latest government coronavirus advice on GOV.UK to ensure appropriate local protocols and guidelines are followed.  The government have created a number of helpful guides which can be found here.

Employers are being asked to educate staff and workers in terms of preventing the spread of this virus.  Encourage everyone to wash their hands regularly.    Alcohol hand sanitizer should be available and in view.  Staff with symptoms should immediately notify their supervisor and use the 111 online coronavirus service to find out what to do next.  For those staff which might be considered more vulnerable, for example pregnant women and aged 70 or over should be told to stay home and self isolate.  Also this is the time to ensure everyone’s contact numbers and emergency contact details are all up to date. Managers and supervisors need to know how to spot symptoms of coronavirus.

What is Coronavirus?

Cornoavirus is a new virus that can lead to the COVID-19 disease.  This illness or disease affects your lungs and airways.  The virus is similar to cornoaviruses that cause SARS and MERS.  The Cornoavirus spreads easily from person-to-person via close contact, up to about 6 feet. The transmission of coronavirus occurs via miniscule respiratory droplets.

It is a zoonotic disease which means it passes from animal or insect to a human.  Well-known zoonic diseases include ebola, bird flue, maleria, swine flue and rabies etc.

Where did this new Covid-19 virus come from?

The source of the Covid-19 virus is believed to be a “wet market” in Wuhan in the capital of Central China’s Hubei province.  The market sold both dead and live animals including fish and birds. Markets like this the ideal ground for viruses to jump from animals to humans.  Hygiene standards are difficult to maintain if live animals are being kept and butchered on site.   All the time markets like this carry on, zoonotic coronaviruses will carry on developing.

History of Coronaviruses

Human coronaviruses (CoV) were first discovered in the 1960’s.  They are responsible for a substantial proportion of upper respiratory tract infections in children.  Coronaviruses infect humans and many animals (vertebrates).  It is thought these coronaviruses (CoVs) emerged from animal reservoirs,  an animal virus that crossed to humans.

(SARS) was first recognized in Guangdong Province, China, in November 2002. The virus spread to more than 30 countries and caused disease in more than 7900 patients across five continents. ().

Click here to learn more about the history of coronaviruses.

Latest Facts and news about Covid-19

Those in the UK can get all the latest public health information from CDC go here: https://www.coronavirus.gov.  For all the latest research information from NIH go here: https://www.nih.gov/coronavirus