Time To Travel? Looking At The Risks In The COVID-19 Era

As pharmaceutical and healthcare organizations prepare to edge back to something resembling normality within the time of COVID-19, the risks around travel need to be assessed (given the relative ease of infectivity of the SARS-CoV-2 virus). There will be visits required to conduct Factory Acceptance Tests, to review contract laboratory facilities, to review new technologies and so on. A foremost concern should be with ensuring that the measures taken on-site are applied to the travelling employee. An effective way to achieve this is through a risk assessment. The key criterion should be with travel, accommodation, site visits and return to work. This is after the question ‘Is the travel really necessary?’ has been posed and satisfactorily answered.

Pharmaceutical and healthcare organizations have been grappling with the novel coronavirus throughout 2020 (the starting point varies depending on the country, although on 11th February 2020 the World Health Organization declared a pandemic and officially named the disease caused by the SARS-CoV02 virus as COVID-19, short for “coronavirus disease 2019.”

In response of the vectors of transmission, the hierarchy of protective measures is:

Do not visit.

Maintain social distancing (at 2 meters or greater).

Sanitize hands regularly.

Wear appropriate PPE, including surgical facemasks.

This article outlines advice for employers and employees working in pharmaceuticals and healthcare in relation to key business travel.

The reference is:

Sandle, T. (2020) Time To Travel? Looking At The Risks In The COVID-19 Era, IVT Network.

Free access at: https://www.ivtnetwork.com/article/time-travel-looking-risks-covid-19-era

Posted by Dr. Tim Sandle, Pharmaceutical Microbiology Resources (http://www.pharmamicroresources.com/)