The novel Coronavirus disease caused by the COVID-19 has already been declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organisation. If proper measures are not taken against this viral disease, people might get severely affected throughout the world because of its rapid contagious nature and its quality of staying dormant within the individual for a prolonged period of time after he or she is affected.
Suddenly, it emerges with its ominous nature and leads to tremendous respiratory issues which have already resulted in a lot of deaths around the world and have affected a huge section of population across Europe, North and South America, China and Southeast Asia.
Basic safety guidelines :
Proper awareness and safety measures should be adopted to exterminate this virus from the root and save the human race. Since this virus affects certain animals too, whose meat is edible and is commonly consumed by humans, precautions should be taken during culinary processes as well. The Coronavirus spreads through social interaction and from the respiratory or esophageal fluids as well. Thus precaution and proper diagnosis is essential after which quarantining during treatment should be done.
Warehouses: A workplace with enough potential to aggravate the COVID-19 pandemic
Warehouses are places where a lot of manual labor and workforce are engaged in receiving, picking, packing and shipping activities. People are employed to look after the storage of products as well as the proper transportation and maintenance of machinery and supervising automation.
Since the COVID-19 is a disease that has never been on the radar of healthcare specialists, doctors and scientists; hence it has proved significantly difficult to fight against. The disease spreads through social interaction and warehouses are prime places where humans interact as part of their official protocol and also to necessitate interaction that happens in the workplace. Thus there is enough chance that the disease might spread if proper action is not taken to prevent it.
Primary recommendations for sanitizing warehouses and preventing the spread of COVID-19 within the warehouse premises :
The World Health Organisation has already declared the Coronavirus disease to be a global epidemic and has issued regulatory and precautionary measures for community centers, health centers, households, workplaces and the like. Amongst these, certain workplace measures and etiquettes are common to warehouses. Others should be necessarily adapted according to the nature of the facilities.
- Since the COVID-19 virus spreads through respiratory droplets from persons to persons who are in close proximity with each other, hence proper care should be taken to prevent the spread within a warehouse facility. People should be advised to wear protective masks so as to prevent spreading the disease to others if they are already affected.
- Disinfection of surfaces should be done regularly because the coronavirus is capable of staying active on surfaces after being deposited there. Cleaning activities that remove dirt, dust, germs and other harmful microbes should also be done from time to time.
- Those warehouses which work as cold storage might need to store meat for processing and shipping in containers later. If any of the animals had been affected by the same virus and met its end, the virus might also spread from the infected meat. Therefore it is very essential to get the meat from proper sources and avoid the meat of infected animals and birds to prevent contamination within the warehouse.
- If any person has been diagnosed ill, then that area should be closed off and the rest of the spaces should be well aerated. The cleaning staff involved should clean all the areas within the warehouse prior to using disinfection. The most popular disinfectants are those which contain over 70% concentrated alcohol and diluted household bleaching solutions.
Conclusion :
Though it has been declared to be endemic, the COVID-19 has been slowing down. Eminent Biochemists say that most of the people affected by the Coronavirus disease are prone to get cured after treatment.
But it is essential that certain precautions should be adhered to, in order to resist the spread of the disease. Before any specific antidote is engineered industrially, these measures will help to prevent further spread and the associated panic that results. Warehousing staff and authorities should also adhere to these precautions strictly and spread as much awareness amongst themselves and others, in order to ward off the threat that is posed by the novel Coronavirus.