After months of staying closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, offices are beginning to reopen in some states—whether you’re ready for it or not. But, of course, the coronavirus is still very much with us. Staying safe when you start to go back to work will have to become a part of the job for many employees.
Of course, much of the responsibility rests on the employer to keep their workers safe. That means, for instance, making sure people get paid sick leave—and that they’re actually encouraged and allowed to take it. But there are other important (and not necessarily obvious) ways to keep yourself safe and for employers to protect their employees.
As a reminder, here’s how the coronavirus is spread.
We know that the coronavirus is predominantly spread via respiratory droplets, Lindsey Gottlieb, M.D., director of infection prevention at Mount Sinai Morningside, tells SELF. When an infected person coughs or sneezes, those virus-containing droplets can land directly in someone else’s mouth or eyes and go on to infect them. Or those droplets might fall onto a surface, like an elevator button, that someone else touches, and then they pick up the virus on their fingers. Then, if that person touches their eyes, nose, or mouth, they can become infected.
More and more, we’re also recognizing that people who don’t have symptoms—either because they haven’t developed them yet or because they’ll never develop noticeable symptoms—can also play a role in transmission, Humberto Choi, M.D., a pulmonary and critical care specialist at Cleveland Clinic, tells SELF. It’s not clear exactly how much of the spread is due to exposure to asymptomatic carriers, but the fact that they can spread the virus is becoming increasingly clear.
The longer you spend in close proximity to someone who is infected, the more likely it is that you’ll become infected too. That’s why it’s important that when we go back to the office (or go anywhere, really) we take steps to reduce the number of people around us, maintain at least six feet of distance between us and other people as much as possible, and wear masks, especially when that social distancing isn’t possible. Of course, your ability to adhere to these guidelines depends on the exact nature of your job. But, in general, here’s how experts recommend we stay safe in the midst of COVID-19 as offices begin to reopen.
1. Make a plan for how you’ll personally protect yourself.
You may not have a lot of say over how your office is arranged or the steps your employer takes to prevent the spread of coronavirus. But there are some very important and generally pretty simple things you can do to protect yourself.
In particular, Dr. Choi recommends making a general plan before going in. That could include things like:
- Check in with yourself, Dr. Gottlieb says. Do you feel sick? Do you have a fever? If so, don’t go to work.
- Wear a mask. Also, prepare yourself ahead of time for how long you’ll be wearing it and when, if ever, you will feel comfortable taking it off. And think ahead about how you’ll compensate to protect yourself when you’re not wearing it (like during lunch).
- Practice good hand hygiene. Consider keeping your own personal supply of hand sanitizer at your desk.
- Clean your workspace. Whether you bring your laptop home or not, it’s a good idea to wipe it down at least once a day, Dr. Gottlieb says.
- Overall, think ahead about the configuration of your office, Dr. Choi says. What kind of risks might your usual work day present? Think ahead about how you’ll protect yourself against them.
2. Employers should think about creative ways to reduce the amount of people in the office at once.
Reducing the amount of people in the office is a crucial step for a few reasons. First, it makes it a lot easier to socially distance from your coworkers if there are just physically fewer of you in one place. Second, if someone who has COVID-19 does come to the office, having fewer people there will mean fewer people are potentially affected, Dr. Gottlieb notes.
“Because we want to avoid having people stuck in the same place at the same time, employers need to be creative about how they can [achieve that],” Dr. Choi says. For instance, employers can implement strategies like staggering shifts and alternating or rotating through days when people will work from home versus come into the office.
3. Consider using barriers between workspaces to help reduce transmission.
Some businesses have put up barriers or cubicle walls between employees’ workstations, similar to those already implemented in some grocery stores and salons. The idea here is that, if someone does release some respiratory droplets containing the virus, the barrier will prevent them from being carried to another person who’s nearby, Dr. Choi explains.
Although there aren’t any studies looking specifically at how effective barriers like these are at preventing transmission, Dr. Choi says it’s just “common sense” to use something like this. And it may be especially important in offices where social distancing is difficult to maintain, Dr. Gottlieb says.
4. Keep windows open during the day if you can.
We know that the virus is much less likely to spread in an environment with good, open airflow (like the outdoors) compared to a cramped, closed office space. If your office allows, Dr. Gottlieb recommends keeping windows open to facilitate airflow during the day.
5. Avoid crowding in shared spaces, especially eating areas.
Shared break rooms and lunch areas may be a thing of the past, especially if it becomes difficult to maintain proper social distancing. If you’re eating, you’re not wearing a mask, so keeping up that distance between people becomes even more important to protect yourself.
But not everyone has the ability to eat at their desk or outside, so employers may need to get a little creative about handling lunch. For instance, Dr. Gottlieb says that at her hospital they’ve encouraged people to stagger their lunchtimes so that their eating area doesn’t become too crowded.
6. Make hand hygiene easy and accessible.
We know that hand hygiene is incredibly important in preventing the spread of the virus, but we also know that it’s not always something people are great at actually doing. Employers can help a lot by making it as easy as possible to keep your hands clean by providing hand sanitizer in common areas or even to individual employees, Dr. Gottlieb says.
This is crucial for those moments when you, say, get off the elevator and forget you pressed the button, or you come back from the bathroom, where you had to touch the handle after you’d already dutifully washed your hands. Having a bottle of hand sanitizer right there at the ready will make it much easier to actually keep your hands clean.
7. Encourage mask-wearing, especially in shared spaces.
If you’re going to be around other people and you can’t guarantee that you’ll be able to keep a safe distance from them (which, in most cases, you can’t), then wearing a mask is essential.
Shared bathrooms present a unique opportunity for the virus to spread because some research has shown that it may be spread via feces (the particles of which may enter the air when you flush). That isn’t conclusive yet, but Dr. Gottlieb recommends keeping your mask on while in the bathroom and, of course, washing your hands.
8. Keep your work area clean and frequently sanitize any shared equipment.
Regardless of your office’s cleaning procedures, it’s smart to wipe down your own space at least once a day, Dr. Gottlieb says. And, if you share equipment, like a computer at a reception desk, clean it as frequently as possible, she says. She recommends using any of the classic alcohol-based wipes, but make sure it won’t damage the device. The manufacturer may have specific instructions for how to disinfect it. Apple, for instance, says it’s okay to gently use alcohol-based wipes on certain areas of a laptop, like the keyboard and the exterior.
If you take certain items home with you, like a laptop, your phone, or a planner, it makes sense to wipe them down when you get home so that you’re not accidentally carrying viral particles from one place to another.
9. Wash your hands as soon as you get home.
When you spend all day outside your home in an environment you may not have a ton of control over, the best thing you can do when you get home is wash your hands, Dr. Gottlieb says.
Some people, especially health care workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, may take more extreme measures, Dr. Choi says, like changing their clothes immediately, wiping down the soles of their shoes, or showering even before going home.
Dr. Gottlieb says she usually takes her shoes off either outside her apartment door or right when she gets inside, then she washes her hands, changes her clothes, wipes down her cell phone, and washes her hands again.
It’s entirely understandable that people in those positions would want to take every possible precaution to protect their families. But ultimately we don’t know how helpful those extra actions really are. So it really comes down to your own personal preference—as long as you wash your hands.
Related:
