With the spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) to California, along with our annual flu season, we want to make sure that we are providing helpful information to our clients and their families to stay healthy and safe.
Please take the following precautions immediately:
- Wash your hands often. Especially after sneezing and coughing. It’s best to wash them for 20 seconds with soap and water, or use a strong alcohol based hand sanitizer if hand washing is not possible at that moment. (But don’t rely on hand sanitizer).
- Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when you cough or sneeze and promptly dispose of the tissue.
- Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands.
- Stay away from people who are sick.
For general household precautions, using an antiseptic wipe to clean door handles, car steering wheels, kitchen counters, the TV remote control, the mouse and keyboard of your computer, the handle of the toilet, the equipment at the gym before and after use may helpful during flu season. Wiping down surfaces that are touched often is also advisable.
Additional guidance from the CDC can be found here.
As an agency, we held training in the office to role play an outbreak of any infectious disease, including reviewing our supplies and emergency plan. We re-visited proper handwashing and sick day protocol with all of our caregivers, nurses, and staff.
As with flu season, we do ask clients to be flexible with last minute staff switches in case we have several call-outs for work at the same time. The agency provides between 24 and 48 hours of paid sick leave each year to our employees and we have a policy that they not report to work when they feel ill, have a fever, cough, etc. We’ve had no report of an increase in flu or illness beyond what we normally see each season.