A selection of questions and answers from the Victorian COVID-19 Hub

Q: Do workers have to wear eye protection when accompanying participants in the community?

A:  Under the current ‘Last Step’ of the Victorian Government Roadmap, disability support workers are now only required to wear eye protection when providing support to people with disability who are suspected or confirmed to have COVID-19. Surgical masks are still required to be worn both indoors and outdoors in all circumstances.

However PPE, for example, gloves, gown or protective eyewear, should still be used for hands-on support whenever there is a risk of splash or exposure to blood or body fluids. This applies to all service settings including residential accommodation.

Guidance on the DHHS website has not yet caught up with this advice and will be updated shortly.

Q: When a staff member shows symptoms of COVID-19 and gets tested, do the people they have interacted with in the workplace also need to isolate pending test results?

A: Individuals who have symptoms and are awaiting results of a COVID-19 test should self-isolate until received. Contacts of these individuals do not need to isolate or get tested if they are symptom-free.

If the result is positive, the individual needs to isolate for 14 days and until symptom-free. Close contacts, and close contacts of those close contacts also need to quarantine for 14 days. DHHS contact tracers will advise people if they need to quarantine. For further information see What to do if you have coronavirus (COVID-19).

Q: When staff return to work, how does an organisation go about cleaning bathrooms between use to ensure the virus is not spread within the workplace?

A: Bathrooms should be included in the routine cleaning schedule. The frequency of cleaning high touch and minimally touched surfaces should be determined by the number of individuals who use it during the day.

When there is community transmission of COVID-19, you should revise the schedule to include more frequent cleaning (minimum of twice per day) of the high touch surfaces such as taps, door handles, soap dispensers etc.

DHHS has recently published environmental cleaning guidelines and a series of factsheets

Coronavirus (COVID-19) cleaning guidelines for workplaces [Word]
Factsheet – cleaning workforce [Word]
Factsheet – cleaning supervisors [Word]
Factsheet – cleaning guidelines [Word]