Impact of the pandemic on global health and the need for clean environments
Upon its emergence in China in November 2019, this coronavirus managed to spread to every single country within a matter of months. The first to suffer were countries in East Asia, neighboring China, but soon after, all countries, close or far, started detecting sick patients within their borders.In a matter of weeks, the number of patients has soared all around the world, and this disease was soon declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO).
This pandemic is so severe that in a less than a year since the first detection of the virus, it has managed to harvest the lives of more than 1million people around the world. Tens of millions got sick, and substantial amount of them remained with neurological sequalae that might stick with them for the rest of their lives.
Coronavirus is not the only dangerous virus out there, there are much more viruses and pathogens causing diseases on a daily basis that we are not even aware of. However, after the worldwide spread of COVID19(coronavirus) in 2020, governments and individuals started re-questioning what is considered a clean environment and what is not and the standards for a clean premises, office, or school has changed.
It has become a standard of care to have a temperature measuring device at the entrance of every building to exclude sick people with fever from coming in.
Changing Standards for Clean Premises
It has become a standard to find sanitation dispensers spread at every corner, especially in closed places. It has become common to use cleaning disinfecting wipes to clean surfaces and objects of public use, to limit the spread of germs from one person to another. Not only that, pictures of people wearing white, protective suits spraying disinfecting chemicals in schools, churches or offices became very common.
These people, who perform high-end cleaning services using steam machines spraying disinfecting chemical agents, became on high demand from every government office or a respected firm desiring to sanitize their environment.
These services became a standard of care after the presence of coronavirus patient in a specific place. Even more than that, some school chains and international companies would use the full steam cleaning service whenever workers were on vacations or weekends, in order to have their grounds clean and disease-free for their employees and ensure their good health, and continuous productivity.
Scientists have conducted a lot to studies over the methods of transmission of the coronavirus. It is believed that this vicious virus could stay on surfaces for days and weeks if they are not properly cleaned. As long as this virus is present on a certain surface, anyone coming close to it is considered at risk of catching the virus and becoming sick. This is considered to be one of the major methods in which this virus managed to infect so many people around the world without them being in a direct contact with another COVID19 patient.
Today, most people are aware of this, and this is why you would find many concerned parents requiring information about the last time a certain playground was steam-cleaned. Moreover, some parents would refuse to send their kids to school if a coronavirus pupil was in there, and the school didn’t get cleaned afterwards.
Conclusion
Coronavirus has raised a lot of questions and a lot of issues that were not much of a concern in the past. Some cleaning companies have managed to adapt to the new hygiene standards by offering proper cleaning services and sanitation. Those who did have been doing a great job in helping the community stopping the spread of COVID19, and possibly some other very dangerous germs. Big companies and international chains should be aware oft hose concerns and offer their customers and users a clean, safe environment.
Written by: Dr. Ferass Abu Hanna