TEXAS – In addition to testing and social distancing, proper cleaning and sanitization practices are key to reducing the spread of COVID-19.
What You Need To Know
- In order to see patients in-person again, doctors need to know their offices are safe
- Local company is decontaminating one office for free
- Says it’s a way to give back to those on the pandemic front lines
For one Austin doctor, getting a professional decontamination team to sterilize her entire clinic is critical in order to open back up to patients in the future.
Dr. Adriana Guerra hasn’t had patients physically in her office in weeks— she’s exclusively doing telemedicine, but her clinic also offers parked car COVID-19 testing.
“All of our clinical staff are following really strict PPE protocols, they're wearing hundred percent head-to-toe correct PPE gear, and they will meet you in your parked car during your appointment," said Guerra.
Since she started testing, Guerra has had several patients test positive for the novel coronavirus.
“So far only one of our patients has required hospitalization. She was in the ICU and on a ventilator for 10 days," said Guerra.
That patient has since recovered and soon Dr. Guerra hopes to begin seeing patients in her office again. But before that can happen, her office needs to be thoroughly sterilized.
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“It’s important that we keep this environment safe so that our clinical staff don't get infected and so that when we do slowly start opening up for annual wellness exams our immunocompromised patients or elderly patients. Patients with a lot of comorbidities can eventually come back into our clinic with an understanding that we take sterilization and— and just general health and safety really seriously," said Guerra.
“We’re an environmental services provider focusing on spills, infectious diseases, and more recently, infectious diseases more than anything else," said Trey Franklin, a general manager with CG Environmental. "We’re doing this office pro bono because these people are on the front lines of finding out where this disease is, who’s got it.”
The company has experience with infectious diseases and Franklin says they even sterilized spaces contaminated with Ebola in Dallas in 2014.
“It's a very meticulous process but it's very, very important to understand that if you don't treat this with respect in regard to what this disease can do and how it can move in between people, then we're actually just kind of making it worse," said Franklin. "So our philosophy is to find it and kill it, and make sure it died right there and we don't take it anywhere else.”
The company’s extensive protocols will hopefully allow Dr. Guerra to soon begin seeing patients in person again.
“It’s really important that we keep the clinic sterile and a safe environment for all of our team members and our patients," said Guerra.