from the editor
opinion
The rise of fogging services during a pandemic Despite the development of coronavirus vaccines that have proven efficacious in preventing serious illness, hospitalisation and death,
Cleaning to break the chain of infection The cleaning industry provides a vital service, ensuring that workplaces, hospitals, schools, transport and public spaces are kept clean and pleasant to use. Surveys conducted in the past by the hospitality industry consistently placed cleanliness at the top of customer choice factors. The importance of cleanliness and hygiene has moved even more to the foreground as South Africa is struggling to cope with the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic driven by the rapid spread of the Delta variant. Hospitals are under extreme pressure as the need for beds and oxygen skyrocket at a tremendous pace. With the current public health situation bolstering the necessity for effective appropriate surface disinfection in mind, we take a closer look at methods to break the chain of infection and offer the best possible protection against the spread of the coronavirus. Thorough cleaning and disinfecting has always been a priority in healthcare facilities but has received refreshed prominence in many industries since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and became a driver of innovation. Another feature looks at the highly specialised area of window and façade cleaning and offers insight into the latest equipment, expert industry input relating to cleaning methods and transformation of the sector. Enjoy the read, #StaySafe and #VaccinateToSaveSouthAfrica
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the world is gripped by the economic and healthcare havoc COVID-19 continues to wreak. The third wave currently sweeping through South Africa, compounded by the delays in rolling out vaccinations, means that citizens’ lives are still hugely impacted.
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his means that nonpharmaceutical interventions such as masking, ventilation, social distancing, hand hygiene, surface cleaning and disinfection will be with us well into 2022. It is not an understatement to say that sections of our population are being gripped by panic in the third wave. It is therefore not surprising that so many are looking to fog their facilities to ‘eliminate’ COVID-19 and assure the safety of occupants and visitors. Unfortunately, the ‘cleaning theatre’ of the fogging process merely gives them a false sense of security. The public misconceptions regarding fogging date back to the start of the pandemic in 2020. Early laboratory tests indicated that the coronavirus could survive on surfaces for up to 6 days. The flaw in this research was that 10 million virus particles were placed on the test area. This would require at least one hundred COVID-19 positive people coughing and sneezing on the test area. This is unlikely to happen in real life! Dr Emanuel Goldman1 a microbiologist at New Jersey Medical School, published his landmark research ‘Exaggerated risk of transmission of COVID-19 by fomites’2 in The Lancet on 30 July 2020. Even prior to this publication there was increasing evidence that the dominant route of transmission of the virus is via aerosol droplets dispersed during talking, sneezing or coughing.
At the time, the CDC3 and WHO4 were under increasing pressure to recognise the aerosol transmission route. In an open letter5 dated 6 July 2020, 239 scientists from 32 countries urged the WHO to finally acknowledge the overwhelming scientific evidence supporting aerosol transmission. In fairness, we have video evidence that within both the CDC and WHO the aerosol transmission debate was raging! Ultimately, aerosol transmission gained due recognition. The CDC eventually unequivocally stated that there’s ‘less than a 1 in 10 000 chance of acquiring COVID-19 from a surface’6. This fully vindicated Dr Goldman’s research. The Professional Body for Environmental Hygiene7 (PBEH) has monitored the pandemic since the very beginning. We were advising our industry associations, the National Contract Cleaners Association (NCCA)8 and BEECA9 Cleaning Association on cleaning and disinfecting best practices to reduce the transmission of the coronavirus. We were literally reviewing scores of documents each week, sifting through the inconsistent advice that was sometimes being communicated. A key document we identified was the National Department of Health advisory10 issued on 10 June 2020. The Department deserves enormous credit for the accuracy and relevance of this document. The key message from a cleaning and disinfection perspective was “The Department of Health does
