Did you know that the Surfacide Helios® System isn’t just for patient rooms? In fact, many hospitals deploy the UV-light disinfection Helios System in places where patients don’t even go, including staff common areas and nurse workstations. It’s important to prioritize these areas as you would patient rooms. Recently, new research from the University of Pennsylvania highlights the critical need of incorporating the same cleaning and disinfecting protocols in staff areas as you do the rest of the hospital.
Of the surfaces tested, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found SARS-CoV-2 RNA in many areas within staff common areas, such as refrigerator and microwave handles, bathroom doorknobs, toilets, tables, and more. For both staff common areas and nurse stations, researchers found the viral load “increased surface contamination was observed as the [SARS-CoV-2] patient census increased over time, underscoring a need to ensure adequate staffing, resources, and efforts for environmental disinfection during periods of high [SARS-CoV-2] burden.”
Shown to eliminate SARS-CoV-2 by 95% within an actual clinical setting, and nearly two times as effective as just manual cleaning alone, Surfacide’s Helios UV-C Disinfection System has significantly supplemented manual cleaning with advanced technology. Let the expert team at Surfacide help you with that.
Reference
Zhang, H., Kelly, B., David, M., Lautenbach, E., Huang, E., Bekele, S., . . . Ziegler, M. (2021). Severe acute respiratory coronavirus virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) surface contamination in staff common areas and impact on healthcare worker infection: Prospective surveillance during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, 1-4. doi:10.1017/ice.2021.468
