ASSOCIATIONINSIGHT
Portable Sanitation Association International News
BIWEEKLY EDITION JUNE 10, 2020
Page 17
COVID-19 and Portable Sanitation Topic Round Up
The PSAI attends weekly briefing sessions with medical personnel from the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Here are recent highlight of those sessions.
• Transmission is not as easy as first thought. COVID-19 is
transmitted almost exclusively through the air. When people
who are COVID-19 positive breathe, sneeze, or cough, they
emit live virus into the air. It is transmitted to others when
they breathe it in. The virus is present in fecal matter, but it
does not appear capable of infecting a person in that form.
The virus is also present on surfaces, but it degrades there
fairly quickly. There is no evidence that the virus "jumps" off
a surface or enters the body through the skin.
• Maintain that social distance. Given that the main method
of contracting the virus is through the respiratory system, it is
essential that your team be protected—and protect others—
from breathing it in. Recent tests have shown that standing within one meter (about 39 inches) of another
person is the most dangerous space for transmission of COVID-19. Distances of greater than a meter decrease
the risk of transmission by 89 percent, and distances of two meters (around 6.5 feet) reduce transmission by as
much as 99 percent.
• Data on test efficacy and re-infection is not yet
clear. Scientists have noticed that the virus shows
up in current human testing, but it isn't always in
an infectious state. Some of the positive test results
people have received show only that they have the
virus; the tests cannot distinguish whether it can infect
someone else at that point. Because of this, the matter
of whether someone can get COVID-19 more than
once in a short period of time is also unclear. CDC
officials say they are engaged in "intense research" on
testing that will distinguish which people can actually
transmit the disease to others and also whether
re-infection is possible.
In other news:
• Counterfeit masks and respirators are showing up
in the North American market. These products are
falsely marketed and sold as being National Institute for
Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)-approved and
may not be capable of providing appropriate respiratory
protection to workers. When NIOSH becomes aware of
counterfeit respirators or those misrepresenting NIOSH
approval on the market, they post them to alert users,
purchasers, and manufacturers.
NIOSH-approved masks and respirators have an approval label within the packaging (on the box or in the
users' instructions). An abbreviated approval is on the FFR itself. Check the approval number on the NIOSH
Certified Equipment List (CEL) or the NIOSH Trusted-Source page to see if the respirator is NIOSH-approved.
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