Indow is a manufacturing company based in Portland, Oregon, one of the first US cities to experience community transmission of the COVID-19 virus.

We have several treasured employees who fall into the high-risk category for a severe, life-threatening infection, which is an important reminder that even if you are not at risk for a life-threatening infection, you can be a carrier to those at risk. We want to do whatever we can to protect them and everyone else at our 40-person company.

While the number of infected people in the Portland area is still relatively small, we believe it’s vital to begin our response strategy immediately to give us time to cement behavioral changes before infection or panic becomes widespread. In our organization, there are already many who are deeply concerned. 

In response to this challenge, we have created and implemented a fairly comprehensive COVID-19 mitigation plan. In this article, I share my research and implementation within our facility. 

Since no one in our startup company was responsible for epidemic response planning, I did a lot of research over the weekend and created a document to share with senior staff for comment. Once those comments were rolled in, I asked my life-long friend, Dr. Shawn Lockhart, who is a fungal disease expert for the CDC in Atlanta, to review. He gave our plan an enthusiastic thumbs up so I feel comfortable providing it for others to use. We welcome collaboration to improve upon this start, so please share your comments below. 

As everyone in business knows, plans are great but execution is key, and in the case of epidemic response, rapid employee behavior changes are critical. With this in mind, on Monday morning, March 2nd, the first workday after learning community transmission was happening in the Portland area, I held an all-company meeting to present our plan and basic factual information about COVID-19. It took 20 minutes with questions, so not a big hit to the workday and I’m certain everyone was more productive knowing our company had its act together about the looming pandemic threat. I built on a previous company talk about the Growth Mindset to emphasize it was possible for everyone in the room to change lifelong hand washing and other habits, right away.

While I think the talk delivered important information and a sense of urgency with good clarity, not everything went perfectly! I demonstrated the length of time for effective hand-washing by having the whole company join me in singing Happy Birthday twice in a row. We sang to the two employees with the nearest birthdates while we made hand-washing motions, but I spaced on James’s name! Argh! 

Finally, I closed with a couple of important thoughts. The first was that if we adopted the right behaviors, we could significantly reduce the chance of COVID-19 spreading through our workplace, which was especially important to employees in high-risk categories. The second point was to help everyone keep things in perspective by asking a quick math problem: “What is 90,000 / 12,000,000?” Daniel was first to answer, ‘¾ of a %.’ I explained the 90,000 was the total number of infections worldwide, while 12 million is the population of Wuhan, the epidemic’s origin. If all the world’s infections had happened in Wuhan, it represents less than 1% of that city’s population. I was trying to balance reducing panic while maintaining resolve by communicating the odds of getting sick were low, but among our company are those whose lives would be especially at risk, so we all needed to respond correctly. 

On Tuesday, we created a daily cleaning plan, breaking our 20,000 square foot facility into zones and appointing zone captains. Drawing from Lean, we now have colored stickers on every spot which needs to be cleaned. We have a daily rotation of employees doing the cleaning, including me, the CEO. We are in this together. 

On Wednesday, we began planning our work from home program. We have a split of employees who can work from home and those who must be here making our window inserts. We are preparing to maximize our remote working as a way to reduce the vectors for the disease to become prevalent in our workplace. In executing this, we are emphasizing that minimizing the number of employees who come to our facility is a way to protect the health of those who must come in to complete their work. 

Here is our COVID-19 response plan. 

Indow COVID-19 Response Plan

This guide is for all Indow employees. Its goal is to reduce the likelihood of COVID-19 (Novel Coronavirus) infections among our team and our families. 

COVID-19 is circulating in the Portland metro area, with the first case documented on Friday, Feb. 29, of ‘community transmission’, which means health authorities cannot trace the case directly to a known sick person. At almost the same time, a second case of community transmission was discovered in Washington State. A subsequent DNA study indicates it is likely COVID-19 began circulating in Snohomish County (north of Seattle) starting in mid-January. COVID-19 has been circulating in the Portland metro area for a minimum of two weeks. 

The symptoms - symptoms typically start with a fever and possibly a dry cough

• Fever
• Dry cough
• Fatigue
• Shortness of breath

Typical signs and symptoms include: fever (87.9%), dry cough (67.7%), fatigue (38.1%), Lung phlegm (33.4%), shortness of breath (18.6%), sore throat (13.9%), headache (13.6%), myalgia or arthralgia (14.8%), chills (11.4%)

Approximately 80% of laboratory-confirmed patients have had mild to moderate disease, (this number includes non-pneumonia and pneumonia cases), and 13.8% have severe disease. The median time from onset to clinical recovery for mild cases is approximately 2 weeks and is 3-6 weeks for patients with severe or critical disease.

People who are most at risk of severe complications

• Older than 60
• Smokers
• Diabetics
• Individuals suffering from cardiovascular disease

Least at risk

• Children

When to stay home 

• Stay home when you have a fever or a dry cough  
• Any employee who exhibits symptoms at work will return home immediately
• If you feel at all bad, take your temperature before coming to work or while at work
• Doctor’s notes are NOT required. We need to trust each other.
• Stay home until you are free of fever (100° F or lower using an oral thermometer) and any other symptoms for at least 24 hours, without the use of fever-reducing or other symptom-altering medicines (e.g. cough suppressants).
• If you are out of ETO and unable to work from home, talk to your supervisor before coming into work. We will strive for maximum flexibility accommodating your financial needs. 
• If you feel well, come to work! We need healthy employees to keep Indow in operation while their colleagues are at home recovering. 

Working from home

• When work can be done from home, we will maximize telecommuting on a department by department basis. This reduces the vectors for the disease to enter our workplace.

Hygiene at work

• Wash your hands with soap and water for the time it takes to sing Happy Birthday twice, repeatedly throughout the day
• Do not shake anyone’s hands in the office or away from the office
• If hand washing cannot be performed under certain situations, liberal use of hand sanitizer (at least 60% alcohol) is recommended
• Cough or sneeze into a tissue. If none is in reach, cough or sneeze into your elbow.
• Wash your hands for the time it takes to sing Happy Birthday twice, after coughing or sneezing or blowing your nose into a tissue
• Wash your clothing when you get home if you cough or sneeze into your elbow
• Use your forearm or knuckles to operate light switches
• Wash your hands repeatedly throughout the day

Keeping Indow clean

• All light switches, doorknobs, common handles, common tables, microwave buttons will be cleaned daily
• Indow will place posters encouraging staying home when sick, cough and sneeze etiquette, and hand hygiene in our workplace. 
• We will provide tissues throughout the workplace
• Employees will be asked to wipe down their keyboards and mice, once per week.
• Hand sanitizer bottles will be distributed throughout the workplace
• We will discontinue use of communal hand towels in the kitchen and use paper towels there instead

Behavior outside work - how to stay healthy

• Wash your hands for the time it takes to sing Happy Birthday twice, repeatedly throughout the day
• Do not shake anyone’s hands in the office or away from the office
• If hand washing cannot be performed under certain situations, liberal use of hand sanitizer (at least 60% alcohol) is recommended
• Use your forearm or knuckles to operate light switches, elevator buttons
• Cough or sneeze into a tissue. If none is in reach, cough or sneeze into your elbow.
• Wash your hands after coughing or sneezing or blowing your nose into a tissue
• Wash your clothes if you cough or sneeze into your elbow
• Wash your hands immediately upon returning home from activities where you have touched things that are not yours.
• If you want, use an N95 mask to prevent yourself from touching your mouth or nose. The virus is often caught when we touch our faces. 
• Wash your hands repeatedly throughout the day

Sources:

CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/specific-groups/guidance-business-response.html 

WHO: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint-mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf

Basic data about COVID-19, 

• Coronaviruses have been around for a long time. They are one of many viruses that cause common cold symptoms like runny nose and cough and fever. 
• COVID-19 is thought to spread mainly from person-to-person between people who are in close contact with one another (within about 6 feet) through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes. These droplets can land in the mouths or noses of people who are nearby or possibly be inhaled into the lungs.
• It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes
• It is not known for certain how long COVID-19 lasts on surfaces, but other closely related coronavirus types, like the common cold, last up to several days
• The average incubation period is between 2 and 14 days, with some reasonable estimates at 5 to 6 days. This means after a person becomes infected with the virus, it will on average take 5 to 6 days before symptoms appear. 

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