With the opening up of the economy after the COVID-19 lockdowns, many companies are having to adapt to the reality of operating in a post-COVID-19 economy. One of the important characteristics of this new reality is the fact that businesses cannot afford to ignore workplace COVID-19 testing. Doing so can lead to catastrophic consequences not just on the health of their employees but can even affect the operations of the business. For example, a mass outbreak of COVID-19 can lead to the loss of valuable lives, shutdowns, and much more.
If the new reality calls for workplace COVID-19 testing, then the next logical question should be how frequently this should be done. In this article, we offer a guideline on how often your company should perform workforce testing for COVID-19.
Factors to Consider
One of the biggest challenges in managing COVID-19 in your company is the fact that many people who get the disease remain asymptomatic, that is, they show no symptoms at all. This however does not mean that they cannot pass it along to other people in the same office space. In fact, experts say that while it takes 5 days between infection and the manifestation of symptoms, COVID-19 victims can infect other people with the virus as early as three days after infection. Another factor to consider is the fact that mass testing for COVID-19 can be very expensive which means that companies may shy away from testing large numbers of their employees. This presents a catch-22 situation for employers. Fortunately, there are various ways to get around this problem.
Sample Testing
One of the ways companies with large numbers of employees can get around this problem is to perform random testing on sections of their employees. To be effective, this can be done every 5 days. The advantage of doing this is that it helps the company keep testing costs down while at the same time ensuring that infected employees are identified in time and isolated from the general population.
The sample size will of course vary from organization to organization depending on the total number of employees. One other factor that is likely to influence the sample size is the risk of exposure that employees face. For example, employees who are likely to interact with many people such as hotel staff, taxi drivers, and restaurant workers face a greater risk of infection than, say, accountants. For this reason, a company that is in the former category might consider having a larger sample size than the latter in order to ensure that they stay on top of any outbreaks in the workplace.
Benefits
Ensuring that your company is constantly testing for COVID-19 will help keep potential disruptions at a minimum. The last thing any company wants is to face a shutdown due to a COVID-19 outbreak. Another benefit of workplace COVID-19 testing is that the company is able to get quick results and thus can take action quickly in case of any red flags that may be spotted. Workplace COVID-19 testing also ensures 100% compliance as it does not rely on employees going to testing centers. Get in touch with Linear Dx for affordable workplace COVID-19 tests today.
