Ask the Experts: Tips for Coronavirus Cleaning

The Coronavirus is spread through respiratory droplets that experts say can be shared through a sneeze, a cough or even when someone is talking. That’s why social distancing and deep cleaning are important ways to fight the spread of the virus.

Julie Holton from mConnexions joins our Nick Aiello to talk about the best ways to make sure your environment is safe.

Learn more about the best practices for cleaning coronavirus by watching this video or reading the transcript below.

Transcript:

Julie: Morning. Welcome back to our special series called expert connexions where we are connecting with you as experts who can help during this coronavirus pandemic. I’m Julie Holton and I’m the founder and principal strategist of mConnexions. I want to get right into this morning’s topic. By now we’ve all heard from experts who talked about how coronavirus is spread through respiratory droplets that can be shared or a sneeze, a cough or even just talking face-to-face with someone. This is why social distancing and deep cleaning are two very important factors when it comes to stopping or trying to stop the spread of this virus. So joining us this morning let me bring him in here is Nick Aiello with PuroClean of mid-Michigan. Hey, Nick thanks for joining me this morning.

Nick: Absolutely thanks for having me, Julie.

Julie: Well I know you guys are really busy so I appreciate you taking the time to really give us some peace of mind. I know we were kind of just chatting offline a little bit I feel like everything I touch I’m second-guessing even in my house like what am I touching and how am I cleaning right and all of that and so that’s what I want to focus on talking with you because PuroClean of mid-Michigan really focuses on all sorts of biohazard cleanup which includes cleanup from viruses like coronavirus. So can you talk to us, I know right now we have a lot of businesses for example that are closed and so what are you doing with these businesses that are closed to make sure that to the best that we can that maybe there isn’t any contamination?

Nick: Sure so what we’re offering right now amidst our government shutdown, we all know that where we’re sitting upon a three-week shutdown of all non-essential businesses. We’re reaching out to businesses of all shapes and sizes. Being an office building, the restaurants, be it schools, churches, gyms, high-traffic areas and we’re offering what’s called a pre-cleaning so what we do is we come in and we do a pre and post-tests with a third-party scientific team that we work with and after the pretest, we go through and we clean all the high-traffic areas. So tabletops. any horizontal surfaces, doorknobs, keyboards, places that get touched heavily by hands and traffic and after our are cleaning, the scientific team, the third party team, will come back through and they’ll do a post-test to show that our cleaning has met the standards and guidelines of their protocol and what we’re doing this for really is to offer businesses peace of mind. It’s not necessarily that the business that we’re cleaning had someone who was infected with the virus working for them or had a customer come in, but we’ve entered a kind of a new realm in a society where people are going to be concerned even after this epidemic is over. So our key is to offer what we’re labeling as peace of mind.

Julie: And that makes make sense for sure and Nick I know we were talking you were telling me you’ve been in some restaurants for example and again and I know we’ve got some video on your Facebook page that people want to see what some of this cleaning looks like, but again these are businesses that have not had any known outbreak or something of that sort. You’re going in and cleaning for peace of mind and making sure that everything’s above par. What kind of cleaning solvents are you using? I know there’s some you know there’s a lot of specific things about what you’re using.

Nick: So yeah without getting into too much detail as far as what the actual product is, what we use is EPA-approved, non-toxic chemistry that follows a protocol with cleaning first and then a disinfecting followed after. So everything we use is EPA approved, non-toxic. It’s not harmful to anyone to the touch, to breathe, and truth be told you could even drink the product and not be harmed by it so that’s the other thing we’re selling, is a lot of these cleaning companies are going through and they’re using pesticides or products that could lead to whole other realm of problems aside from the coronavirus after the fact and everything we use is completely not toxic.

Julie: Yeah and I just imagine with all of the bleach being used right now at homes and washing toys and we have to be really careful that we’re not creating a different sort of problem by cleaning. So, Nick, I’m glad you mentioned that. You also have given some really helpful information about what service surfaces we should focus on, specifically we’re talking about horizontal surfaces. Why is that so important?

Nick: So in all the studies that we’ve seen regarding the virus, the virus rests on horizontal surfaces. It’s less likely to be found on walls or anything that’s sitting vertical, but it’s going to be your tabletops, it’s going to be your desks, it’s going to be your counters, your doorknobs and handles that people touch on a frequent basis. So it’s important that you focus on those and you’re not worried so much about scrubbing the walls from ceiling to floor and you know burning yourself out to that extent. It’s horizontal and high-traffic which we found is most important.

Julie: Okay and I know you also provide a service that helps to deal with disaster planning. Can you talk about that a little bit, some of the cataloging and things that you’re doing for businesses?

Nick: Sure absolutely. So I don’t think anyone was truly prepared for this virus outbreak right and that’s the first thing we noticed as we started to mount a plan of attacking this. As we reached out to more and more businesses what became apparent is very few businesses have any kind of plan in place let alone a plan for a biomedical outbreak. So what we’re offering businesses free of charge during this time of you know extreme uncertainty, is disaster planning. So what we’ll do is we’ll come into your business with cameras and we’ll do a three-dimensional rendering of your entire business. It’s similar to like you’d see as a virtual tour on like a real estate website right. We’ll keep that cataloged, you’ll get a copy of it, we’ll have a copy of it, and any disaster that happens in the future be biomedical, be it a water break, be it a fire, be it mold, we’ll have your business on file and we’ll be able to properly put a plan in place as to how to rectify that disaster.

Julie: Wow okay and Nick what is the best way for people to contact you if they have any questions?

Nick: So the best way to reach us is our 24-hour phone number which is five one seven two nine two eight seven zero zero, that phone number rings seven different phones. We answer a day and night, we answer it on the weekends, we’ve never actually had a call in our history that has gone to voicemail so someone’s always picked up the phone and you can always reach us at our website as well which is just www.Puroclean.com/hp-mi which I believe is scrolling at the bottom of the screen here right now, but the phone is honestly the best way to reach us.

Julie: Nick is there anything else that any other messages that you have for people that you want them to be aware of?

Nick: I think the important thing during this time of uncertainty is to keep doing what you’re doing. So social distancing which we’ve heard in nausea now. It’s probably going to be the word of 2020 and we’re only in March right. You just got to keep doing that. I know it’s frustrating you and I were talking offline you know we’re kind of getting cabin fever already. I love my family, but being at home with my family for now which feels like you know months in reality only been a couple of weeks is starting to take a toll, but you know as long as we can get through this I feel like we can get through anything.

Julie: Absolutely Nick, I completely agree and I remember when you and I were talking we actually you were our very first interview that we did in this expert connection series and it was a hey okay let’s go on in 30 minutes and tell people what they need to know and I remember during that interview you said, people just need to be patient with one another, they need to be kind to one another, and that is stood with me for the last two weeks that we’ve been doing all of these interviews because at the end of the day we’re all going through this together in some form or another personally, professionally with our businesses, and so Nick I just I really appreciate you coming on to share some of this information with us and thank you to your entire team for what you’re doing to really help our businesses and our communities to make sure that we’re staying safe. 

Nick: Absolutely thanks for having me, Julie.

Julie: Yeah thanks Nick and for everyone else join us we’re going to continue this series starting at one o’clock about just an hour and a half from now we’re going to talk with Nikali Luke of simplified Tax and Accounting and so many tax changes to be aware of and so he’s going to take your questions live. We’re going to talk through what these changes are for businesses, but also for individuals and some individuals may still want to file even though that tax that federal tax deadline has been extended. So I’m going to ask Nick all about this and so that will be coming up today at one o’clock. We will see you then.