Hi

looking for feedback on carrying out works in homes of persons who have symptoms or who have tested positive for COVID 19. We carry out maintenance work for local authorities, Electrical, gas and building works.

In the event emergency work has to be carried out to make property safe should we be asking engineers to attend if the tenant/homeowner is showing symptoms?We have completed RAMs for working in occupied properties for general scenarios where engineers are asked to wear face coverings, maintain social distancing and clean hands etc but up until now we have said no working in properties where the tenant has tested positive or is isolating or showing symptoms. Client (Local authority) has now suggested we should just provide engineers with FFP2 masks as an extra precaution to enable us to work in these situations but im not comfortable with this as Government guidance still states that these should only be used in Health care settings. Plus they are only effective if face fit tested.

We can carry out further Covid specific Risk assessments for working in homes where risk is higher but these would only conclude with the same control measures we are using when working in homes generally. (social distancing etc) based on current guidance.

Bottom line for me is should we be asking engineers to attend situation where risk to them is increased?

Any guidance gratefully received.

Regards

Simon Sharp

I can tell you how this was handled very recently by a well known business that deals with broadband connection.

There were symptoms in the household and we were awaiting test results.

Our internet and landline went down due to works outside and were not correctly restored.

The aforementioned business needed access into the household to complete the reconnection.  They said they would do this only because we had been left with no service at all (had there been some service they would not have entered).

Usual precautions of hygiene, distancing, face covering were of course put in place.

RPE was not used by the engineer.  We stayed out of his way.

Perhaps not identical situation but as my wife is disabled we have had several visits from the local physiological team. They have entered our house to survey the situation and arrange for certain equipment to be provided. On each visit they wore the usual face covering worn in non-front line situations in hospitals and single-use gloves. Due to the nature of the visit it was not possible to maintain social distancing nor were we asked to wear face coverings. Whether the persons in the property are symptomatic or not is in my view not strictly relevant as it is possible to be infected but asymptomatic and a 'spreader'. Obviously the standard precautions need to be taken, particularly for hand decontamination as presumably the technician will have had hand contact with surfaces within the premises that could be contaminated, alcohol sanitiser following the visit.