Cleaning, Disinfecting and New CDC Guidelines: What Commercial Cleaners Need to Know

Just in time for many offices, facilities, and public spaces to reopen, the CDC has rolled out new guidelines for cleaning and disinfecting against COVID-19. While the new guidelines suggest that, outside of healthcare facilities, once a day cleaning with a detergent is enough to remove viruses from surfaces where there are no reports of COVID-19, members of the Global Biorisk Advisory Council (GBAC) want to emphasize that for commercial cleaning, the following steps are critical to controlling contamination and ensuring a healthy and safe space in your facilities.

Risk Assessment

GPAC states that “when you are called upon to clean, sanitize, and disinfect a space, you need to gather as much information as you can, prior to going to the site. This is critical when you are responding to a situation where potentially infectious materials are involved. Your life and the lives of others depend on it.” As commercial cleaners, be sure to know before you go and carefully assess each cleaning job and take the time to develop the steps and strategies that allow for a safe and effective process.

Clean then Disinfect

The removal of "soil" such as dust, dirt, and debris often can provide a 90% reduction in reducing germs. Cleaning prepares a surface or item for disinfection. Once cleaned, you can disinfect with great success. As the GPAC states “cleaning for health is most effective at mitigating the spread of illnesses when it is a multi-step approach that involves first cleaning surfaces to remove or reduce soil loads and then disinfecting to kill bacteria, fungi, and inactivate viruses.”

Colker Janitorial Supplies is here to help you navigate these new CDC guidelines and the ISSA and GBAC recommendations and the many unique challenges of cleaning for health and safety. Contact us today at 888-4-COLKER to schedule a customized cleaning assessment of your facility or to answer any questions about reopening safely.