From the CEO’s desk
Dear Plett Residents
This is a long letter concerning a vitally important subject so please bear with me. It will take you about 10 minutes to read but following the recommendations contained below may save your life and/or the lives of your loved ones, so please persevere and take note.
I had initially intended that a second letter would follow closely upon the heels of my initial “From the CEO’s Desk” letter to the town urging that we “take the Coronavirus crisis seriously and act responsibly” but we at Plett Tourism have been so busy managing the crisis with which our town is faced, answering numerous questions from concerned residents, maintaining a positive outlook for our town, disseminating information and managing situations that arise in these very difficult circumstances and organizing initiatives such as the disinfecting of critical areas and resources within our town that the necessary time has simply not been available.
In a way this delay has been a good thing as during the intervening period the national lockdown has been imposed which changes everything for a season, a great deal of new information has come to hand and prevailing attitudes have changed placing us in a position of being able to place a comprehensive strategy before you.
The ‘fogging’ of our town went extremely well and was generally warmly received and appreciated by our communities and well published in the news media, thereby painting our town in a positive light. This exercise will be repeated during and at the end of the lockdown period to sanitise our town before we hopefully recommence some sort of normality in our lives and the initiative is spreading to the entire Garden Route area.
As to whether the lockdown will prove to be a successful initiative will depend on a number of factors including the extent to which compliance to our President’s directives have been adhered to but equally importantly is the fact that we need to take this time aside to ensure that we adopt health protocols and habits that will both optimize the outcome of the lockdown and, in addition, prepare us to resume a reasonably normal life as safely as possible thereafter. As a community, there is little merit in our causing massive economic hardship without having an effective and consolidated strategy to deal with the virus going forward. We cannot be in a state of lockdown indefinitely.
Thus far the lockdown seems to have delivered above expected results in slowing the spread of the virus, but it is early days.
To this end, Bruce Richardson, the Chairman of Plett Tourism, and I have done a great deal of research and given a great deal of thought to this issue based on the precept that defeating the pandemic is not only a national, provincial and local issue – at the end it comes down to the individual – each of us doing what we need to do to ensure that we neither get infected by nor spread Covid-19. That is the key – each of us doing what we have been instructed and need to do and the purpose of this letter is to endeavor to outline an optimum strategy to avoid contracting and/or spreading Covid-19. In presenting the following information and recommendations, we have undertaken wide ranging research and watched many videos and presentations, but we have been particularly influenced by the following:
- A video made by two statisticians Jeremy Howard and Petro Thomas accessible on You Tube @ youtu.be/BoDwXwZXsDI who use data to come to certain conclusions – we need #masks4all
- A number of You Tube videos from individuals in the Czech Republic urging other countries to follow what they are successfully doing using masks #masks4all
- A statistical analysis of the spread of the Coronavirus in countries that do not advocate the use of protective masks to combat the spread of the virus as opposed to those countries in which the use of masks is either encouraged of legislated.
- Local documents and videos urging the regular washing of hands and general personal hygiene as a tool for combatting the spread of Covid -19.
Readers may wish to take the opportunity to review these and other sources of information as the better we are informed, the better the results we will achieve.
The more comprehensive the strategy you adopt, the greater the contribution you will make in preventing the spread and the less likely you are to suffer from the virus.
Broadly speaking, there are three basic strategies outlined to avoid both catching and spreading the virus:
- Social distancing (all affected countries are doing this and we must do this)
- Personal hygiene habits (all affected countries are doing this and we must do this)
- Wearing a mask whenever you leave home (only countries in which mask wearing is encouraged are successfully containing the spread of the virus. This is a key issue and we need to follow their example)
We hope in this letter to the community to give firm guidance on each of these strategies. Avoiding being infected by the virus requires ongoing commitment and focus until we have all changed our habits to conform with best practice.
Social distancing
- During the lockdown period we are perforce of Presidential order required to stay in our own homes and severely restrict our movements to the following activities:
- Shopping for groceries;
- Seeking medical attention;
- Going to the Chemist for medication;
- Accessing banking services;
- Obtaining (now cheap) fuel
- Collecting social grants
- We are also barred from travelling both by air and by road. A period of lockdown is necessary to commence a turnaround strategy but the longer the lockdown is in place the more difficult it will become to re-build our economy so it is vital that we adopt a strategy that maximises the effect of the lockdown and provides an effective plan for after lockdown.
At some point in time these restrictions will either be lifted or modified and we need to be prepared for this time. - It is legislated and/or recommended that once we move past the period of the lockdown, we:
- Limit our exposure to other people as much as is reasonably possible;
- Refrain from gathering together in large groups;
- Maintain a distance of not less than 2 meters between ourselves and other people. To our minds, 2 meters should be the absolute minimum. One doctor has pointed out that in the case of a violent sneeze the distance should be not less than 6 meters.
- Visuals of the virus moving through the air shows that it is rapidly dispersed by air flow. For this reason, once we emerge from the lockdown period we need to focus on keeping the air flowing through our homes, places of work and when indulging in socializing and leisure activities. We need to ensure that insofar as is possible there is an abundance of movement of fresh air. This becomes ever more important as we move towards winter when we try and keep warm by closing all the windows and doors. We need to change our habits in that regard. Viral infections are diseases facilitated by lack of adequate ventilation.
- Social distancing is a very important aspect of avoiding becoming infected by the virus and we need to pay proper attention to these issues.
Personal Hygiene
We are told to wash our hands regularly. Although we hear much about “washing our hands”, little guidance is given on the “when to wash your hands aspect”. It is recommended that the following guidelines be followed. Some of these guidelines will only apply once relative normality has returned:
After touching high traffic areas – those places which many people touch the same items throughout the day with the most infectious part of their body, their fingertips, such as:
- ATM machines
- Credit card machines
- Pens in shops and restaurants (rather carry your own)
- Stair railings
- Surfaces at fuel stations
- Supermarket trolleys
- Products on supermarket shelves
- Door handles
- Public toilets
A good start is to avoid going to supermarkets excessively – compile a comprehensive grocery list and shop not more than once a week.
Avoid handling and looking at the labels etc. of goods on supermarket shelves and then returning such items to the shelf. Decide what you want and put it in your basket. The less we “handle” items the less opportunity there is to spread the virus.
Social engagements and bathrooms. Wash or sanitise your hands immediately after:
- Shaking hands with anyone (although handshaking, hugging, kissing, etc. in social circumstances should cease altogether until the crisis has passed). If you feel you must touch each other, make it a bringing together of your elbows bearing in mind that it is your hands and, in particular, the ends of your fingers that are the most important zone when it comes to transmitting the virus to others and into your own body by means of contact with your mouth, nose or eyes
- Arriving home – thereby preventing transmission into your home
- Arriving at the homes of family and friends – thereby preventing transmission into their homes.
- As one commentator suffering from the virus said “no one is going to stick this virus in your nose, eyes or mouth – it is you who are going to do that if you don’t change your habits”
Carry your own paper towels to public bathrooms that may not provide individual paper towels – never use towels or hand drying equipment. Once you have washed and dried your hands, use the paper towel to turn off the tap and open and close the door and then dispose of the paper towel in the closest bin.
When you have been out and about, carry hand sanitiser in your vehicle or on your person and sanitise your hands after each high traffic surface you touch and before even touching your steering wheel when you return to your vehicle – if you have picked up the virus on your hands you do not want to transmit it to a frequent contact area such as your steering wheel, handbrake and indicator, where it can survive for many hours.
Educate your employees on prevention measures and make sure that they show no signs of illness when they arrive at your home or office and ensure that they immediately wash their hands thoroughly both when arriving and periodically thereafter. If your employees, or a member of your family, display any signs of illness rather send your employees home.
- Purchase a light raincoat for your employees to wear when travelling to work. These raincoats should be removed and washed with soap as soon as possible to protect the employee and the workplace. Any cloth garment should be dried and ironed before use and washed again on the return home.
- Provide, or ensure that your employee wears a suitable mask in the workplace to protect all individuals.
- Please remember that there is an equal, if not greater, responsibility to take steps not to infect your employees.
Make sure that any guest arriving in your home or workplace are symptom free and that they wash their hands as a first port of call. If in any doubt as to their or your state of health, rather ask them to go home and come another time.
Make sure that any implements used by guests or employees are washed thoroughly after they depart – preferably in a dishwasher.
Once lockdown is over, make sure that any guests that arrive in your home are symptom free and that they wash their hands as a first port of call. If in any doubt as to their or your state of health, rather ask them to go back home and come another time.
For a period of some hours after receiving guests, friends and employees at home or in the workplace, treat the space as a potentially infected area and make sure that you – wash your hands regularly/wipe down high contact areas with a disinfectant wipe/be very conscious of not touching your mouth, nose and eyes.
Don’t use handkerchiefs – use tissues and change them regularly- particularly if you have been away from home. Handkerchiefs nurture bacteria and viruses.
Teach yourself to refrain from touching you nose, mouth and eyes as much as possible but certainly when you are out and about and not unless you have just washed your hands. If your nose, eyes or mouth itches, use a clean tissue to deal with the issue.
There are also indications that the virus may be spread through defecation in public toilets so pay particular attention to your hands and hygiene generally when you have been to a public bathroom.
Washing of hands means: a vigorous and protracted exercise of at least 20 seconds, accompanied by much hand wringing, using soap and water or water and water-based sanitiser and thoroughly rinsing with water and drying thereafter. Particularly for those who favour long nails, take care to wash under your nails as viruses can lodge there.
In the absence of access to water, an alcohol-based (at least 65% alcohol) hand Sanitiser may be used but this is not as effective as washing your hands so wash your hands again as soon as you have access to soap and water.
Unfortunately, hygiene requirements do not stop there.
Little publicity has been given to the fact that, although the virus is not an airborne virus, it is borne in the air and can remain viable in that state floating around and circulating in the air for a period of up to 3 hours. There is some very scary footage doing the rounds showing the extent to which this happens and the distance of the spread to others within quite a wide radius.
There is much said about the 2-metre (or more) distancing when it comes to coughing and sneezing as within that distance the relatively heavy droplets fall by force of gravity to below face level.
What we are seldom told is that even talking and to a lesser extent, even breathing results in very fine droplets being ejected into the air. These very fine droplets, which can contain the virus, do not fall to the ground but swirl in the air at all levels. They can land on or in your nose, mouth and eyes and cause you to become infected and settle in your hair and on your clothing in which case you then take the virus home with you. They can also attach to your shoes. So if you have been in a potentially contaminated and/or densely populated area such as a supermarket, when you get home:
- Take off your shoes and leave them outside in the sun to sanitise.
- Wash your hands as your standard arriving home protocol before you touch anything, take off your clothes, put them in the wash and go and have a good hot shower including washing your hair. This will flush any viruses you may be carrying down the drain as opposed to depositing them around the house and potentially infecting your family. This sounds like a lot of trouble to go to but rather be safe than sorry.
- Have a good long gargle with heated water (at least 30 seconds) with a suitable disinfecting agent such as Betadine or TCP or even salt and water to flush out any viruses that may have been trapped in the back of your throat.
- Sanitising any items that have been brought into the house such as groceries where reasonably possible is also a good idea.
- Once you have put your groceries away, wash your hands again.
- Sanitise the surface in your kitchen on which you have placed your groceries.
- You should then be suitably sanitised and ready to interact with your family in your safe virus-free home.
Wearing a mask whenever you leave home
Unfortunately, there is a lot of ill-considered and illogical information out there discouraging the use of masks. In response to this we ask two simple questions which expose the error of this type of thinking:
- Why do countries that discourage the use of masks display a high rate of spread of the virus and a relatively high death rate and those who encourage or have a legislative requirement that masks be worn show a far lower rate of spread and lower death rate?
- Those same sources state that masks should only be used once a patient displays signs of the disease in order to stop the patient spreading the disease to others but then state that an individual can be infected with the virus for up to 14 days before displaying symptoms and infect others during that period. What about that 2-week infection period? No strategy that does not address that issue can possibly work and wearing a mask must be a primary option.
Such sources also focus on wearing a mask for our own protection and seem to be ignorant of the most important underlying principle of wearing masks espoused in the slow spreading rate countries of “I wear a mask to protect you and you wear a mask to protect me”. In short what such countries have realised is that if the virus cannot get out there because of a mask stopping the droplets when an individual coughs, sneezes or talks, then there is no infection of surfaces that people can touch and no droplets in the air for others to breath in or infect their clothing, hair etc. In short, we wear masks to stop us infecting others as most of the time, if we do become infected, we are unaware for a period of time as to whether we ourselves are infected. In any event any suggestion that wearing a mask will not to some extent also protect the wearer does not make sense. If it can impede droplets, any mask, no matter how rudimentary, will provide a measure of protection. A double layer of T-shirt material constitutes an effective barrier that potentially virus containing droplets will not pass through.
There is a growing initiative within our area encouraging the manufacture and use of home-made masks. This initiative is creating employment during difficult times and endeavoring to get every members of our community behind a mask as well as releasing professional masks for use by the medical profession. This is a great initiative and we need to support it as much as possible. Detail to follow.
Another very important aspect that masks impact on is the severity of an infection. We believe that it is trite in the medical fraternity to say that the more severe the infection in the first place in terms of the number of viruses introduced into your system when infected, the more likely you will become severely ill and possibly die. A low level of infection in the first instance allows the body to develop an immune response to the infection before infection levels become severe whereas a high level of infection in the first instance may well overwhelm the immune system before it has an opportunity to develop resistance to the virus. A mask (and other initiatives suggested in this letter) that even reduces the level of an infection should, therefore, have a beneficial effect in reducing the “viral load” and make complete recovery more likely.
For these reasons we firmly believe that wearing of masks, even a rudimentary home-made mask, probably does more than anything else to inhibit the spread of the virus. Once worn, these must either be thoroughly washed at high temperature, if a professional or home-made cloth mask, or sanitized by placing in an oven at a temperature of 71.1 Celsius for items such as dust masks that will be destroyed by washing, after each wearing. When removing a mask be careful to only touch the elastic or material straps used to hold the mask in place. Avoid touching the actual mask so that any viruses trapped by the mask are not transferred to your hands.
An important issue is to ensure that in addition to wearing a mask, we take all other recommended measures as set out above to minimise infection and the spread of the virus. Just because one wears a mask does not mean that one can neglect to follow all social distancing and hygiene requirements. All protocols must be adhered to at all times so that there are multiple layers of protection between yourself and contracting the illness. Pairing masks and diligent hand washing has been found to make a very significant difference to the rate of spread.
It is our belief that if we can achieve a high level of adherence to these recommendations in the Bitou area we have the best possible chance to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the Covid – 19 virus and we urge each and every one of you to diligently adhere to all these protocols for as long as is necessary to get us through this very difficult period. Yes, it is time consuming and takes constant concentration and effort but consider what the alternative may be. The more diligent we are as a society the quicker we will be back to normal and getting our economy back on track.
Finally, but not of least importance, stay at home for the duration of the lockdown and only venture out for essential reasons. There are a disturbing number of you out there who seem to feel that for some reasons the regulations do not apply to you.
Your town and your country are depending on each and every one of you.
The contents of this letter have been reviewed, commented on, endorsed and added to by members of the medical profession in Plettenberg Bay.
Yours in service to Plett,
Marius Venter
CEO Plett Tourism
