Is the End Really in Sight for COVID?
Or can you believe it’s only been two years?
This time in 2020, we first started to hear warnings from the WHO about a strange new virus originating from Wuhan, China. Since then, nearly three hundred million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 5½ million deaths have been reported to the WHO (both figures are almost certainly underestimated).
It’s now the start of the New Year and the Science Editor of my Sunday newspaper boldly predicted: “It may not feel like it, but this is the beginning of the end of the pandemic.”
I’m not so low-rent as to quote Winston Churchill’s speech: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end…etc.”.
Oh, well, yes I suppose I did just quote Churchill there – but this is now a good time to think about how your business might be affected by COVID during 2022.
First, Why the Optimism?
Director and lead modeller of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at Washington University, Dr. Christopher J.L. Murray, predicted last month that: “we will see about as many infections in the next 2-3 months as we have in the entire pandemic thus far.”Â
How can that be good news?
Well, although the latest omicron variant is more transmissible, it is much more likely to be asymptomatic and much less likely to result in hospitalisation or death.
WHO's Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus remains “optimistic that this can be the year we not only end the acute stage of the pandemic but we also chart a path to stronger health security.”
Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia predicts that: "Our grandchildren's grandchildren will still be catching (the virus)… but Covid, the disease, will become part of our history as the infection morphs into just another cause of the common cold."
From Pandemic to Epidemic
There is no doubt that the UK (and other countries) made effective strides in counterattacking the virus and its effects through a combination of:
- Health tests
- Better treatments, such as antiviral medicines
- Contact tracing
- Quarantines of affected individuals
- Lockdowns of whole populations
- Social-distancing (including working from home)
- Better ventilation and adaptation of indoor spaces
- Personal protective equipment, cleaning and hand-washing
- Vaccination programmes
New Year’s Resolutions 2022
Keep on doing what you are doing!
By now, you will probably have well-established procedures, risk assessments, and modifications to your workplace.
Despite the above optimism, this is not the time for employers to lower their guard, and the most important precautions you should continue with are:
- Continue to facilitate home-working wherever possible.
- Your cleaners are probably fatigued, but keep up that regular cleaning regime! The virus can still be transmitted from humans to surfaces, then back to other humans.
- Insist on regular hand-washing/sanitisation.
- Encourage the wearing of 3-layer face masks.
- Maintain good ventilation, and meet outdoors wherever possible - if face-to-face meetings are necessary.
- Train staff. It’s always difficult to avoid sounding as if you are sermonising, but find ways of encouraging staff to adhere to healthy diet/lifestyle choices that will keep their immune systems in tip-top condition. More controversially, you may need to formulate policies on unvaccinated staff and lateral flow-testing.
- Identify any vulnerable workers/clients/visitors and spell out precautions in your risk assessment.
- With the benefit of accumulated experience, review workplace layouts for further opportunities of reducing virus transmission.
Arinite clients appreciate we provide practical, no-nonsense advice about what you need to do to establish and maintain a safe and healthy working environment.
Our team of health and safety consultants take pride in keeping health and safety simple.
If you need to call upon our expert assistance, or just for an informal chat, please call our office 0207 947 9581, or type an enquiry to: https://www.arinite.com/contact-us/.
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