As facilities slowly begin to reopen, consider these important infection control tips to prevent the spread of the virus.
While it is too early to fully measure the global impact of the coronavirus, it is safe to assume that how facilities conduct day-to-day business will change. There will be a new norm. People will view the person coughing next to them in the elevator differently. The sniffling and sneezing cubicle neighbor — is it allergies or the flu? While facility departments cannot prevent sick people from coming into their buildings, they can implement measures that mitigate risk and bring peace of mind so that workers and patrons can breathe more easily.
These measures make sense even if the COVID-19 pandemic was a once a century event. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that, since 2010, from 9 million to 45 million people in the United States have contracted the flu each year, with death tolls estimated to be as high as 61,000. Depending upon the severity of the flu season, the economic impact to the United States could exceed $87 billion with 65 percent of those costs the result of lost productivity and revenue — that’s just shy of half a percent of the U.S. gross domestic product; to translate, the flu would wipe out Amazon’s 2019 fourth quarter revenue. Given those numbers, the common flu alone provides significant fiscal justification to improve and invest in facility management practices and operations in six areas. [Click here to read more as published on facilitesnet.com]
