Essential employees working on campus should continue to follow the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and the New York State Department of Health for social distancing, covering coughs and sneezes, staying home when sick, frequent hand cleaning and disinfection of surfaces.
Additionally, the CDC has recently recommended that all people wear cloth face coverings in public settings. More information and instructions on how to make a face covering can be found on the CDC website.
If disposable gloves are used, care should be taken to avoid inadvertent exposure or spreading of contamination: hands should be washed before putting on gloves; gloves should be changed after coming into contact with a person or a potentially-contaminated surface; touching the face or uncontaminated surfaces should be avoided while wearing gloves. Gloves should be disposed of in the trash and hands cleaned after removal. When removing gloves, it is important to avoid touching bare skin with the contaminated outside of the gloves. The CDC website provides an illustrated removal sequence.
The potential for workplace exposures to COVID-19 should be minimized by maintaining a distance of six feet from others, avoiding the use of shared equipment or objects, frequently disinfecting high touch surfaces and cleaning hands often. When these actions are not possible, the college’s Environmental Health & Safety office should be contacted to help determine if the task can be re-designed or if additional controls can be implemented.
Published: Wed, 08 Apr 2020 12:10:26 +0000 by l.vivekanand