What would be the role of everyone in the food safety chain to mimimize very serious issues of Coronavirus?

This is a health and safety issue not a food safety issue but one area we can help with is coaching and supporting good handwashing.

Indeed the vast majority of opinions agree, eg -

Can the virus be passed on through food?

Experience with SARS and MERS suggest that people are not infected with the virus through food. So, it is unlikely the virus is passed on through food and there is no evidence yet of this happening with COVID-19 (coronavirus) to date.
 
Coronaviruses need a host (animal or human) to grow in and cannot grow in food. Thorough cooking is expected to kill the virus because we know that a heat treatment of at least 30min at 60ºC is effective with SARS.

https://www.fsai.ie/...oronavirus.html

Nonetheless I suppose there will always be a few reservationists, eg -

https://www.health.h...resource-center

https://www.nytimes....it-spreads.html

https://www.vox.com/...ransmission-how

Hi all-

I guess my concern is staffing ( we are manufacturing in NYC, eeeeeeek). We have a 7 day work week, as we need to manufacture/produce product daily (24 hr shelf life). Most of our staff work Mon-Fri, with a smaller crew on Sat and Sundays. Pretty much everyone overlaps.

My concern- if one of the employees presents positive, then wouldn't the best/only actual plan be to quarantine everyone who worked with them for 14 days? 

To that end, I am trying to divide the staff in half to isolate half of them from the other, and move to an alternating 3 (bwt 10-11 hrs a day) and 4 (8-10 hr day) day week. That way, if 1 staff is infected, we have at least 50% manufacturing capability. 

Does this sound illogical/ like way too much? While we are sanitizing all non food contact touch-surfaces 3x daily, my concern is that we have 1 infected staff, its close to impossible to state that they will not infect others. Of course everyone is being religious about sanitation procedures, but it just takes one small mistake and a non presenting employee to shut us down entirely. Since we produce single day-use product, we have to produce daily. Not a question of stockpiling etc. 

What do you all think? Is it crazy to shift a large burden of this to employees (reducing $$, increasing daily hrs) in an effort to protect the business/ their livelihoods in the long term? I ideally want to keep as much of a cushion as possible to continue paying as long as possible if business downturns.  I know the answer is for everyone to be ocd about not touching face and not getting sick, but I am not sure I can guarantee that if someone does get sick they wouldn't have infected their team. Less concerned on product end since it all hits 180 F, at which point similar virus cells have died.. 

Hello Bakernat,

I anticipate staffing will be something that is now a concern for many manufacturers who cannot ask staff to work from home and maintain business. Your split of production staff sounds logical to me, if it works out logistically. Something I think should not be overlooked is non-production staff; food handlers wash hands frequently (hopefully) and work in a high hygiene area day to day - what concerns me is if an office member of staff i.e. finance assistant has the virus and spreads it amongst the door handlers, printer screen, kettle handle etc etc during an incubation period. To that effect my place has taken to sanitising office door handles and key pads throughout the day and planning how we can get office staff to work from home where possible if that day arises.

What concerns me is people are non-symptomatic, but can carry the virus and spread it.  How do you combat against this?

We had an hour meeting with all managers to come up with a plan, but I think it left a lot more questions than answers at this point.  Our location, in Alabama in the US doesn't have many infections confirmed yet, but I've been reading up and the infection rate could be on a magnitude of 25 to 1500 times what the actual confirmed infections are for that location.

https://medium.com/@...ie-f4d3d9cd99ca

https://informationi...aphic-datapack/

The plan is to readdress hand-washing and GMP's and report any illness to your supervisor with no other changes at this time.  Senior management balked at the idea of employees who can work from home do work from home which made zero sense to me.  We are severely limiting visitors and postponed any company gatherings indefinitely.  

I'm just crossing my fingers....only time will tell.

HA!  I read my last post about this 3 weeks ago and so much has changed.  This just made me chuckle because we are way, way, way, past the previous thought on it.  

What concerns me is people are non-symptomatic, but can carry the virus and spread it.  How do you combat against this?

 

We had an hour meeting with all managers to come up with a plan, but I think it left a lot more questions than answers at this point.  Our location, in Alabama in the US doesn't have many infections confirmed yet, but I've been reading up and the infection rate could be on a magnitude of 25 to 1500 times what the actual confirmed infections are for that location.

 

https://medium.com/@...ie-f4d3d9cd99ca

 

https://informationi...aphic-datapack/

 

The plan is to readdress hand-washing and GMP's and report any illness to your supervisor with no other changes at this time.  Senior management balked at the idea of employees who can work from home do work from home which made zero sense to me.  We are severely limiting visitors and postponed any company gatherings indefinitely.  

 

I'm just crossing my fingers....only time will tell.

Ryan,

We're in Birmingham also. Talk about being fortunate.