When it comes to getting sick with COVID-19, you might be thinking about this, and we have too. Margaret Setser asked, “What’s the risk of bringing in a cleaning crew?”
We asked the experts: Katie Cary, vice president of infection prevention for HCA Continental Division; Dr. Nipunie Rajapakse, a Pediatric Infectious Diseases Physician at the Mayo Clinic; and Dr. Irfan N. Hafiz, Infectious Disease Physician & Northwest Region Chief Medical Officer, Northwestern Medicine.
Their take: Contracting COVID-19 from a cleaning crew is low risk.
"So cleaning crews should already be have protocols in place for how to protect themselves on a daily basis while cleaning. So that really shouldn't be anything new since COVID. We should always have been protecting ourselves while cleaning," Cary said.
"If you're cleaning when everyone else in the office has gone home, the risk would be much lower," Rajapakse said.
"If it's an office, probably that would be a pretty much a low risk there. You know, as opposed to, say, a factory floor or someplace where there are processing meats or something like that. I mean, it would definitely vary there. And the more complex the area, usually those cleaning crews are given special instructions on how to clean and therefore some personal protective equipment may be necessary," Hafiz said.
If you have a question about your risk, send us a video to whatstherisk@newsy.com. You can see answers to other questions here.
