EDUCATIONAL/STUDENT FACILITIES
ACING THE COVID TEST
How will schools keep their students safe when they head back to the classroom this month? Liam Mynes from Tork manufacturer Essity looks at successful models in other countries and discusses the role played by hand hygiene in enhancing school safety.
Pupils from all over the country will be heading back to the classroom this month. But it will be a return to school like no other.
A string of new guidelines has been issued to help keep students and staff COVID-safe. Social-distancing, the creation of class-sized ‘bubbles’ and increased cleaning frequencies have all been mooted.
But with cases of the virus still spiking around the world it is impossible to assess the level of risk that a return to the classroom involves. And since every country has its own approach to education, the jury is still out as to which procedures will prove to be the most successful in the long run.
By early June, more than 20 countries had closed their schools. The first European country to reopen was Denmark where the children were divided into ‘bubbles’ and inventive new ways were dreamt up to allow for social distancing. Some Danish pupils were taught in a graveyard, for example.
Primary schools in the Netherlands also reopened early, but class sizes were cut by 50% and pupils were asked to study from home for half the week.
In Germany, the older students went back first and stringent social-distancing rules were applied, including one-way systems being imposed throughout buildings and corridors. In fact, different approaches were taken the world over with some schools introducing strict limits on contact between children; others making masks compulsory and some closing down completely in cases where just one student was diagnosed with COVID-19.
However, social distancing and mask-wearing are not the only forms of defence against the virus. According to all the advice, rigorous attention also needs to be paid to hand hygiene to help keep us safe.
The coronavirus can be transferred to objects and surfaces by an infected person, so a thorough surface cleaning regime coupled with frequent handwashing are key to reducing the risk of cross-contamination.
Government guidelines recognise this which is why regular hand washing is included in all the advice. Some schools have responded by introducing new systems and equipment: for example, council bosses in Perth and
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Kinross are making hand sanitiser widely available and installing more temporary sinks, while West Lea School in Edmonton is trialling new child-friendly handwashing units where the water is dispensed through a soft rubber foot- pump to make the process easier.
But good hand hygiene in schools depends heavily on having the right tools to hand and on stressing the importance of hand-washing as a virus-prevention measure. However, a survey conducted by The Global Hygiene Council this summer revealed that nearly 42% of children aged five to 10 do not always use soap when washing their hands at school. The survey assessed primary pupils’ hygiene awareness and habits across seven countries during COVID-19 and discovered that the use of soap everywhere was higher at home than it was in schools.
Only 44% of pupils questioned in the survey said someone at school would always ensure that they washed their hands before eating – a practice that occurred at home for 71% of respondents. And the study authors stressed that the first step towards ensuring good hand hygiene compliance is to provide schools with sufficient supplies of soap. However, only 60% of children said soap was always available in their school toilets while one in 10 said soap was never available.
Providing hand soap and effective hand drying facilities in schools should be an easy issue to address. But it is also important that any systems supplied should be quick and efficient to use because the effects of social-distancing means fewer children will be allowed into the washrooms at once.
A long-lasting supply of soap that is easy for children to access will help to speed up hand-washing. Tork Foam Soaps work well in schools because the dispenser contains 2,500 shots of soap compared with around 1,000 in most liquid soap systems. The dispenser also requires a particularly low push-force which makes hand-washing easier for young schoolchildren.
Hand dryers take at least 10 seconds to dry the hands which means they can cause logjams and queues – both of which need to be avoided in our new socially-distanced world. Paper hand towels speed up hand drying while allowing the pupil to take a towel and move away from the dispenser, freeing it up for the next student.
Tork PeakServe is a good solution because it takes just three seconds to access a towel from the dispenser, allowing hand-drying to be carried out quickly and efficiently. The unit holds more than 2,000 hand towels which ensures a long-lasting supply, and the towels are given out singly to prevent the risk of cross-contamination. The dispenser also requires an exceptionally low pull force which makes it particularly suitable for children.
Encouraging hand hygiene and enforcing social distancing will doubtless make life more difficult for teachers. At Essity, we are doing what we can to help by launching the Tork Safe at Work Education Toolkit.
This provides guidelines on surface cleaning and sanitisation to reduce the spread of pathogens. It offers recommendations
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