Cleaning for wellness

Cleaning and proper disinfection are important as they are making people stay and feel safe

- MANUELA D’AGATA

While waiting for the trusted vaccines and safe therapeutics to relieve Covid-19 fears, building owners, asset managers and facility managers must work to get occupants confidently back into buildings now.

Even with the advent of the vaccine, we will have to learn how to live with the virus. As the flu vaccine, which has been around for years, has not made the flu completely disappear, the same way the Covid-19 vaccine cannot be considered as the magic pill that will immediately restore occupants' trust to return to built environments.

Therefore, building owners and facility managers across all different asset types have been tasked to create new plans that inspire occupants’ and customers’ confidence that a building is safe to be used and that the facilities they might enter have done the best possible to reduce risk of contracting the virus.

This means facility managers are turning to their trusted partners to create those plans and to get guidance and answers. This is a key tipping point for cleaning professionals who now are cleaning to remove or deactivate the virus causing the current pandemic and to reduce the spread of the disease.

We need to shift our perception of clean. Shifting from the visual inspection of “does it look nice and smell nice” to ensuring that we are cleaning hygienically, removing and eliminating dangerous pathogens.

Cleaning and proper disinfection are therefore important as they are making people stay and feel safe.