“I’m a housekeeper in the high acuity unit. We have the best isolation rooms, so COVID patients are sent here if they don’t need to be intubated and in intensive care.
With COVID patients, we were cleaning the rooms twice a day, at least six hours apart. Now cleaning protocols have changed, but we’re still following strict rules to keep everyone safe.
Getting ready to go into the room often takes longer than cleaning the room because of all the PPE that has to be put on. You have to put on a gown, booties, a bonnet, a procedure mask, a face shield and three pairs of gloves. As you come out of the room, you need to take off a layer of gloves so that you're handling things with clean gloves. And a lot of things have to be double-bagged so you can take the inside bag out and put a clean bag outside the room.
I was fitted with a respirator, which can be wiped clean when I come out of the room. At the end of the day, I wipe off the filters, and the mask goes into a bin for sterile processing.
Under normal circumstances, these changes wouldn’t be a big deal. But there was a subdued kind of heaviness, an unspoken stress that everyone was feeling in the beginning.
At first, the hospital was locked down like a ghost town. My ward was empty to keep it available for anyone who was COVID positive.
Now, it’s almost back to normal.
The hospital has shown we can do this. Stores are starting to mandate wearing masks. And more and more people are taking precautions in their daily lives.
I am confident we are prepared and can handle a second wave.”
- Chris, Housekeeper, part of the healthcare team