Coronavirus Outbreak

CDC offers resources for health care providers and businesses.

The coronavirus has reported ties to a large seafood and animal market in Wuhan, China, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Symptoms of this illness include fever, cough, and shortness of breath.

As of February 26, 2020, 14 people in the United States have contracted the virus.

Update March 9, 202o 10:45 AM: There are currently 566 cases of the COVID-19 Virus in the United States and 105 confirmed cases in New York State.

CDC engaged in outreach efforts with hospitals and clinics to ensure organizations have preparations in place to control the virus and prevent infection. As of February 22, the agency had published more than 23 guidance documents on infection control, facility preparedness assessments, personal protective equipment supply planning, and clinical evaluation and management.

Agency guidance for schools includes planning and response protocol for possible outbreaks. On Feb. 25, CDC tweeted that although “there is currently no reported community spread of #COVID19” nationwide, “everyday measures” such as staying home when sick and washing hands with soap and water can help prevent additional cases from surfacing.

Strategies for employers to help prevent workplace exposure:

Encourage employees with symptoms of acute respiratory illness to stay home. Waive the health care provider’s note requirement, as medical facilities may be extremely busy and not able to provide such documentation in a timely way.
Make sure sick leave policies are flexible and correspond with public health guidance. Ensure employees are aware of the policies.
Maintain flexible policies that allow employees to stay home to tend to ill family members.
Promote proper hand hygiene, as well as cough and sneeze etiquette. Instruct employees to frequently wash their hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, or use a sanitizer containing at least 60% alcohol.
Routinely clean frequently touched surfaces such as workstations, countertops, and doorknobs.

Strategies for employers to execute business continuity:

It is critical employers give some thought to how they would run their business if whole communities are put on lockdown, or if employees specifically request to work from home for fear of exposure.

Be sure you have all employees’ cell phone numbers.
If you have a VOIP telephone system, be sure that you and your employees understand how you can forward a call to the employees’ cell phones.
If you don’t have a VOIP phone system, hire an answering service like RUBY or ANSWER CALL. Have all of your incoming calls forwarded to this answering service. Ruby can act as a receptionist and forward each incoming call to the specific employee. Further, they can email calls and/or you can log into their system to monitor all incoming calls and routing. This is a great workaround if you have an old system that’s not flexible.
Does your organization have a VPN (Virtual private network)? If you don’t have a VPN set up so your employees can drill into your network and your servers, then create an account with LogMeIn which can essentially allow you to execute the same without all the setup. It’s critical that employees have remote access to the office and your infrastructure.
Purchase ZOOM Meeting so you can coordinate video conferencing with your team and your customer base.
Forward the mail to another location and scan it in so it’s part of the remote workflow.
What about backups? Maybe create a Master account for DropBox? If not make sure all the work is getting backed up somewhere now that the workforce is desperately located.
Lastly, be sure to communicate with your customer base. Let them know if you are operational and that all systems are a go.