From hygiene and ventilation to capturing the moment of education, there are some basic steps that are worth taking, writes Dr. Mike Bedford, a health and wellness specialist in healthcare facilities. Early childhood education.
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Hygiene: understanding the basics
It is a good idea for children to wash their hands as soon as they arrive at school or at ECE. This can help interrupt the transfer of surfaces or people they have come into contact with. In addition to the normal hand washing routines, ask the children at ECE to wash their hands before leaving. Washing hands before leaving school may not be practical. Forget about antibacterial hand soaps. Some antibacterial soaps use antibiotics, such as triclosan, that don't harm a virus (and shouldn't be sold anyway).
All you need is soap and running water (never split water, and hot water is more effective). Use liquid soap instead of bar soap. When you are about three years old and learn to clean your buttocks, sometimes you are not very specific and the soap can become heavily contaminated.
At ECE, songs can help you wash your hands (please don't have a birthday!). However, since every child can wash their hands five or more times a day, you need to protect your sanity! Action songs can be good so your kids can perform the actions without having to sing the song 30 to 35 times a week. Another good idea is to make "soap gloves": soap on all hands before washing. Hand washing for 20 seconds is recommended, but hand washing with soap and running water is preferable to hand washing.
Drying hands is also important. Paper towels are the most practical option in most situations. In small ECE centers, disposable cloth towels can be good before washing if you can handle them. For paper towels, try "paper towels". Wipe your hands on both sides and on each finger, then crumple the paper towel and roll it up in your hands. Try to make it as small as possible (which can be competitive!). This maximizes contact and reduces damage.
The Nanogirl Pepper Soapy Water demo on YouTube is great too. Just make sure children get the right explanation. For the EPA, explain "soap helps clean up water" and use the explanation of water stress in the original video in schools.
Disinfection and cleaning
I used a computer dictation and it gave me "fiction and cleanliness". Very suitable! Here we have to trust what we know more than we think is helpful. The first is that we know that cleaning really helps. Soaps and cleaning agents remove viruses well. So concentrate on frequent cleaning.
Chlorine-based disinfectants offer you the best possible disinfection of surfaces after cleaning. Other products such as normal supermarket disinfectants (such as benzalkonium chloride) or advanced surface disinfectants such as Zoono can help, but questions remain for the human corona virus.
For example, zoono, a quaternary ammonium silane, works well in bacteria and has been shown to be effective in some coronaviruses, but could work slowly. All disinfectants are best suited for clean surfaces. So wipe them off! Everything that can go through a dishwasher must go through a dishwasher.
Heating and ventilation
In contrast to bacteria, viruses die faster at warmer ambient temperatures. The New Zealand minimum internal temperature of 16 degrees for the EEC is too low (this is the lowest legal EEC minimum temperature in the world). You should aim for at least 18 degrees, the hotter the better.
The other important consideration is ventilation. Most ECE centers have often opened their doors to the outside, so ventilation of the main activity room is not a real problem. However, there may be a problem with the children's rooms and especially with the rooms. Make sure that these rooms are well ventilated. If your ventilation window is open, open it. Please note that heat pumps do not offer ventilation. They only heat the air that is already in the room. If a room is not ventilated, it should not be used.
activities
There has been a debate in the EEC as to whether it is advisable to stop the water feature or the crowd feature. Bringing risks and needs in line, I would say stop these activities for the time being. They increase the risk and children can live without them for a while.
Education: Stop the silly language of "insects" and "germs".
This has shown that most adults in New Zealand do not even know the most basic science of microbes. They don't know the difference between bacteria and viruses, which is like they don't know the difference between a cow and a pasture. This is why simplified advertising such as "kills 99.99% of germs" is sold. 99.99% of what kill? Bacteria? Virus? Only some, not others? In practice, that means nothing, it's just marketing. That is why people are still buying antibacterial soap for a virus epidemic.
Even news from the healthcare industry still uses the "errors" and "germs" language instead of specific words. We recently saw a You Tube clip in which "bacteria" grow on bread cleaned with hand sanitizer. In fact, it was moldy, just moldy bread, and mold really likes wet, bacteria-free bread. But people thought it was bacteria.
My Covid 19 challenge for schools (and as much as possible at ECE) is to capture the moment and teach basic science. What are bacteria, fungi and viruses? How do you work? What is the difference? Why doesn't an antibiotic kill a virus? What is the difference between a soap, an antibacterial and a biocide? How do soaps or detergents reduce the tension in the water and improve humidification? How does marketing take advantage of people's fears and lack of knowledge (think of Protex TV ads)? It is really easy and interesting to teach and it is a great opportunity to learn.
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