How to lower you & Your Children corona virus Risk at Work

The virus spreads more in communal areas with higher numbers of people passing through.

The corona virus is still circulating yet in many countries are taking steps to relax restrictions. 
If you have been asked to back to work or send your children return to school, how can you minimize the risk of infection to yourself and your family??

Although there are still many unknowns about the virus, a increasing amount of data on how it transmits and survives on surfaces can guide our decisions.

You are most likely to catch the SARS-CoV-2 virus by spending a long time near an infected person in an enclosed space. Researchers in Guangzhou, China, examined how the virus was transmitted between 340 people with confirmed infections and the people they had contact with. 

They found that the risk of the infection being passed on at home or by repeated contact with the same person was approximately Ten times bigger than the risk of passing it on in a hospital and hundred times bigger than doing so on public transport.

Outside the home, it's difficult to rank the relative risks, because environments vary so widely. what we can say is that SARS-CoV-2 spread tends to be higher in communal areas where there are higher numbers of people passing through or in areas where there is more physical engagement with the surroundings, for example door handles, desks and computer keyboards, says Seema Jasim at the MRC University of Glasgow Center for Virus Research, UK.

The risk also seems to be higher when people are more physically active. Investigations into a cluster of cases in the Korean city of Cheonan revealed that eight fitness instructors became infected with the virus after attending a four hour at Zumba workshop. Some of them subsequently passed it on to students during classes which involved high intensity exercise in a small indoor studio.

The most warm atmosphere coupled with turbulent air flow generated by intense physical exercise can cause more dense transmission of isolated droplets. However, students attending yoga and Pilates classes in the same space did not become infected.

Regular thorough hand washing is still advised. It remains unclear how long the virus can survive and remain infectious on surfaces.

If surfaces have been contaminated with droplets from an infected person, there might be sufficient virus to infect a person who touches the surface and subsequently transfers the virus to their mouth, nose, eyes or face. However, if they wash their hands thoroughly with soap and warm water for a minimum of 20 seconds, any virus on their hands will be destroyed. 

A recent study revealed that hand washing 6 - 10 times a day is associated with a 36% reduction in the risk of becoming infected with the COVID-19.

Because soap dissolves the virus’s fatty outer envelope, washing with water but no soap is not as effective. Alcohol hand rubs work, but are only necessary where there is no access to hand washing facilities.