If you think someone on your farm may have COVID-19, they should report to a healthcare professional right away, National Pork Board director of producer and public health Dr. Heather Fowler says that you also need to protect the farm.
This includes cleaning and disinfecting areas where the employees worked, launder clothing, and follow CDC guidelines related to lifting isolation restrictions.
“A doorknob, light switches, entryways, things that you would touch a lot. So, remember, this is primarily a droplet-born disease. So, it’s really person-to-person. So, having close contact with someone is your highest risk, but we know that droplets can potentially contaminate surfaces that are then touched, and then, if someone touches their eyes, their nose, their mouth, they can spread it to themselves. So, we do want to make sure that we are covering all the bases and cleaning disinfecting those types of surfaces,” Fowler said.
Farmers should really have a biosecurity plan in place, but it is important to review it before you have to implement it.