'No One Mentions the People Who Clean It Up': What It's Like to Clean Professionally During the COVID-19 Outbreak

https://news.yahoo.com/no-one-mentions-people-clean-170732730.html

Jamie Ducharme
,Time•March 31, 2020

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“It’s kind of terrifying,” says Vanessa, who TIME is identifying by first name only for professional protection. Her supervisors told her to clean the rooms just as she would for a flu patient, but she says she’s treating them like she would for more serious illnesses—throwing out nearly everything disposable, mopping the walls and scrubbing every inch—to be safe. “No one knows exactly how to clean it. We don’t know how contagious this is.”

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'No One Mentions the People Who Clean It Up': What It's Like to Clean Professionally During the COVID-19 Outbreak
[Time]
Jamie Ducharme
,Time•March 31, 2020
'No One Mentions the People Who Clean It Up': What It's Like to Clean Professionally During the COVID-19 Outbreak

When Vanessa is asked to clean up after patients who have the seasonal flu or measles or MRSA in the Pennsylvania hospital where she works in environmental services, she knows what to do. She knows how to disinfect surfaces, what needs to be thrown away and what she should wear to protect herself. But when she’s asked to clean rooms occupied by COVID-19 patients, she’s flying blind.

“It’s kind of terrifying,” says Vanessa, who TIME is identifying by first name only for professional protection. Her supervisors told her to clean the rooms just as she would for a flu patient, but she says she’s treating them like she would for more serious illnesses—throwing out nearly everything disposable, mopping the walls and scrubbing every inch—to be safe. “No one knows exactly how to clean it. We don’t know how contagious this is.”

At a time when cleaning supplies are invaluable and hand-washing is a national activity, people who clean professionally, like Vanessa, have watched their jobs take on new meaning—and considerable new risks. But what has remained the same, they say, is a lack of respect and, often, inadequate compensation.

Vanessa, for example, makes only about $11 an hour for the unenviable job of disinfecting hospital rooms, often without proper protective gear for herself. The fresh N-95 masks still available in her hospital, she says, are mostly going to doctors and nurses; she and her housekeeping colleagues often have to reuse the ones they have. She says she might have stopped showing up at work if she didn’t need the money, especially since she has underlying health conditions that put her at extra risk of getting COVID-19.
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“Because I’m working there,” Vanessa says, “I’m too afraid to go see my family right now.” She lives with her best friend, and is staying away from her parents’ home for now.

Workers across industries are struggling to get the protective equipment they need. Omar, who drives a garbage truck in California, says his company has not even provided hand sanitizer for its workers, even though “we’re dealing with everybody’s trash [and] we don’t know what’s in there.”

When Omar and his coworkers asked for sanitizer, they were given all-purpose cleaner and told to use it on their hands, he says. To stay safe, he’s resorted to asking friends who work in retail to help him find his own sanitizing supplies.

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The risks cleaning professionals assume might be easier to stomach, Vanessa says, if they were recognized publicly.

“Us housekeepers, we have families, we have health issues, we have people and animals we go home to that we could be giving this to,” Vanessa says. “The doctors and nurses have that too, but they get recognized. No one ever mentions the people who clean it up after they’re gone.”

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