Covid-19 in 2021 - The Illusion of ´Back to Normal´!

1. Hard physical work in the cutting area disperses many aerosols into the air.
2. Specific climatic conditions (temperature at around 10°C/ 50°F) allow the virus to remain active for a long time.
3. Insufficient fresh air and circulating air currents enhance the efficient spread of SARS-CoV-2 over distances of up to 8 meters.

The special production conditions in the food industry, with refrigerated production rooms and production-related failure to maintain safe distances between workers, unfortunately provide optimal conditions for virus infections to spread. Redesigning workplaces within production facilities is only possible to a limited extent and does not offer comprehensive protection against infection risk at work.

The danger lies in the invisible: An employee unknowingly carries the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, is infectious even without recognizable symptoms, passes it on to a large number of colleagues, and a few days later, half of the workforce is infected.

Such a mass infection can have severe health and economic consequences and can even lead to a company's shutdown. Thus, completely unnoticed, about 30% of people without disease symptoms can also infect other people.

Prof. Melanie Brinkmann from the study mentioned above team refers to the period of the highest possible risk of infection as the "Window of Opportunity "and thus narrows it down to a period of 5 to 10 days on average, as can be seen in the graph below. Under these conditions (production-related factors and extended period of virus release), it is necessary to act with a fighting attitude to avoid increased infections among the workforce with coronavirus.

Time window of possible infection in case of an undetected spreader “Window of Opportunity”, Prof. Melanie Brinkmann, 2020

Preventive-proactive as the Best Crisis Management Strategy

SARS-CoV-2, with all its challenges, will continue to play a major, even defining role in our daily lives, according to experts, for many months or even years. Even the fact that there are now vaccines on the market promising to get the problems under control will not ensure that we can just go back to normal as we knew it before the pandemic, any time soon. Virologists assume that epidemics and pandemics will not remain exceptional phenomena and signal that we must prepare ourselves accordingly and take precautions. Therefore, it is even more critical that industry and society prepare for threats of this kind and find ways to prevent lockdowns in the future and limit the spread of viruses.

Testing, Testing, Testing…

What remains for the coming time is a Herculean task: The regular and seamless testing of all employees to preserve their health and the company's existence. Fortunately, this challenge can be significantly reduced in complexity, overwhelm, and stress by a new development of a flexible and individually applicable software solution. It enables system-based control and employee testing management efficiently and effectively. The headaches caused by logistical challenges have thus come to an end! And the costs for tests and software are marginal compared to the loss of production and possible damage to the company's image.

What about the Threat of Becoming a Hotspot Yourself?

Prophylactic testing is the first choice for detecting new infection sources early on. However, if employees are crowded together in queues outside the examination rooms, these areas can quickly become a new source of infection. Precise scheduling and meticulous time planning are necessary to avoid traffic jams and, at the same time, to process all examinations quickly. The number of examination rooms required to test 1,000 employees every 5 minutes during a shift (8 hours), for example, can be seen in the table chart below.How many testing sites does a company need to test 1,000 employees per day?

Coordinating testing over multiple examination rooms and initiating action in cases with positive test results are essential processes in which the persons in charge must not make any mistake under any circumstances. Results must be evaluated and assigned to teams, which is a very arduous task in decentralized structures. 

A Software That Helps Faster than Any Vaccine

Vaccination is an important step in getting the pandemic under control. However, there is no 100% guarantee since people can still pass on the virus, and nobody can make reliable statements about the long-term stability of immunity at present. But the situation is not hopeless, and help is available – in the form of the first intelligent software solution for corporate protection against pandemics, developed by a Swiss company. With the application of coordination and management software, the company Rigilog AG focuses precisely on addressing the companies' most frequent pain points these days: How do I protect my employees, my customers, my brand, my image - my company? 

The Protectus^TM software is effective and efficient, yet easy to use. A few highlights at a glance:

• immediately applicable and cost-effective
• minimizes sources of errors
• is compliant with GDPR
• displays multiple locations in one interface
• enables use on mobile devices (especially useful in production areas)
• documents processes and provides security
• detailed evaluations provide insight and overview of the current situation in the company
• easy and quick manual addition of visitors
• is available as a SaaS or cloud solution
• can alternatively be operated on-site at the company (on-premise) 

"I feel relieved from a considerable burden because, with the support of Protectus^TM, all my testing-related problems are being solved quickly and easily.”, says administration manager Florian Baumann of Blömer Fleisch GmbH from Germany.User-friendly and intuitive application that can be operated from anywhere

But Protectus^TM offers more than just facilitating the testing procedure. Tracing an infected person's contacts, for example, becomes foolproof by assigning employees to organizational structures. Laboratory results can be recorded centrally. Employees tested positive can be placed "In quarantine" status and thus set to "OFF "in the system for the next test.

As a company initiating protective measures and preventive employee testing, you want to make your proactive actions publicly visible for confidence-building reasons. An interactive widget for the company's website visualizing the number of tests performed with the last date of the examination is an additional benefit that should not be underestimated and that Protectus^TM offers as an option. Linked to an overview page with the company's exact details and the company's coded ID, a company's website visitor can verify the certificate's authenticity.

As an additional benefit the authenticity of the certificate can be verified via a link to an overview page