More cleaning, hand sanitizer in NC buses, trains and airports to combat coronavirus
With anxiety about COVID-19 growing among travelers, the people who operate buses, trains, planes and airports in North Carolina are stepping up efforts to prevent the potential spread of the coronavirus.
They are increasing how often they clean surfaces touched by passengers and are using stronger disinfectants to kill bacteria and eliminate viruses. They’re also making it easier for travelers to clean and sanitize their hands and are providing information about how people can prevent the spread of germs as they move about.
Raleigh-Durham International Airport has ordered more than 100 hand sanitizing stations that it will put in “high-touch areas” throughout the terminals, said spokeswoman Stephanie Hawco. The airport has also ordered hand-held sprayers that workers will use to disinfect shuttle buses and areas within the terminals, including security checkpoints, ticket counters, kiosks and gate areas, Hawco said.
RDU has confirmed that the cleaning products used by its contractors are “certified to eliminated viruses,” including coronavirus, Hawco said.
“Our cleaning crews are focused on disinfecting bathrooms and high-touch areas in our terminals and shuttle buses such as handrails, doorknobs, ticket counters and kiosks,” she wrote in an email.
Amtrak, which operates passenger trains in North Carolina, announced this week that it is now cleaning trains and stations “multiple times a day and in some cases on an hourly basis.” It says its crews are increasingly wiping down handrails, doorknobs, handles and restrooms with disinfectants and that the railroad is making sanitizers and wipes available to passengers throughout trains and stations.
GoTriangle has made hand sanitizer available on its buses and has used disinfectant to wipe down seats and rails since the H1N1 flu epidemic of 2009, according to spokeswoman Burgetta Wheeler. Because many GoTriangle buses are idle during the day, between the morning and evening commutes, they are usually wiped down twice a day, Wheeler said.
Workers wipe all of the surfaces inside the bus with a hospital-grade disinfectant, including seat handles, steering wheels and intercoms, then finish by spraying the bus seats and the interior. When they’re done, the bus smells a bit like a hospital.
Hand sanitizer on order
Coronavirus prompted GoRaleigh to order sanitizer pumps for its buses, but the city doesn’t expect to receive them until late next week, said spokeswoman Andrea Epstein.
“They have been almost impossible to procure,” Epstein wrote in an email.
In the meantime, Epstein said, the company that operates GoRaleigh this week began spraying disinfectant on bus seats and aisles and on hand rails, stanchion bars and other “high-touch” areas when the buses are fueled at the end of each day. She also said the company began spraying and wiping door handles and common areas and surfaces at GoRaleigh station with Clorox.
GoRaleigh also posted placards with information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about how to prevent the spread of coronavirus and other germs, with such commonsense suggestions as washing hands more frequently. RDU is showing similar messages on digital signs throughout the terminals and will soon post them in shuttle buses as well, Hawco said.
The CDC says the coronavirus is thought to remain viable for hours to days on various surfaces, but there have been no documented cases of coronavirus transmitted to a person this way. The main concern is direct contact with someone carrying the virus.
COVID-19 emerged in China two months ago, and the first concerns for Americans was with travelers coming to the U.S. from Asia. U.S. airlines have suspended flights to and from China and reduced service to other Asian destinations, including South Korea, Japan and Singapore. When coronavirus flared up in northern Italy, airlines suspended service to Milan as well.
Airlines have begun to beef up their procedures for cleaning planes between flights. Delta Air Lines, for example, says last month it began “fogging” the cabins of planes with disinfectant after they arrive from Asia and that it is acquiring additional machines to begin fogging other international arrivals, starting with trans-Atlantic flights from places where coronavirus is present.
The CDC says most viruses don’t spread easily on airplanes because the air is filtered as it is recirculated; the primary risk would be having direct contact with someone who is sneezing and coughing or in touching a surface that person has touched. As with colds and the flu, health officials say the best way to avoid getting COVID-19 is to avoid contact with an infected person and to wash hands frequently.
This story was originally published March 6, 2020 at 5:45 AM with the headline "More cleaning, hand sanitizer in NC buses, trains and airports to combat coronavirus."
