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Thread: PPE or not PPE
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Old 9th Jul 2020, 14:22
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Genghis the Engineer
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Just think of every industrial health and safety course you've ever been on.

In order of escalation:-

(1) Reduce risk
(2) Remove people from risk
(3) PPE.

PPE is, and should always be, a last resort. However mask wearing is not (3) PPE, it's (2) removing people from risk - it's about containing any possible infections in the person who already has them, and not spreading them. It's not about protection.

(1) in this instance is about questionnaires, not turning up with the faintest sign of illness, having people's temperatures checked... It's the first set of things that should be done.

Worn screens are PPE, so anybody wearing them, should only do so when (1) and (2) have been fully exploited.

And as has already been noted, gloves are not a good idea, not even faintly. Medical practitioners wear them for *some* purposes, potentially changing them many times in a day, within a rigid set of procedures. For the rest of us, constant hand hygiene is a much much better thing to be doing - as it is for most medics most of the time. The only major exceptions are when performing first aid, and when carrying out cleaning tasks.

G
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