The first case of Coronavirus was detected in December 2019 and later on in a short period, coronavirus spread all over the world and become pandemic.Up till now coronavirus is still spreading and affecting more and more people around the globe.Coronavirus disturbed all the working routines and it changed the way people work. Many new concepts were introduced like social distancing, work from home etc.Almost one year of this pandemic is completed but still, no vaccines are commercially available for common people of the word.On December 2, 2020, the United Kingdom became the first country who approved the vaccine of a pharmaceutical company named Pfizer.
On 8 December 2020, a 90-year-old patient was given the first dose of vaccine.
In the first stage, it will only be given to the
- Health care staff
- Old age people
Many other Vaccines are under trials and even if these trials are successful it is not possible to vaccinate all the people of the world immediately. So it will take more time to develop a proper treatment for this pandemic.
The best practice to prevent the attack of coronavirus is to keep yourself safe at home or work by adopting safety measures.
The concept of Stay at Home and Work from Home is not possible for all workers, especially for those who are working in hospitals and pharmaceutical industries.
In this article, we will discuss mainly the safety measures which should be taken by the pharmaceutical industries for the prevention of coronavirus.
So the question is what preventative measures a pharmaceutical industry should take to keep their staff safe during work at a manufacturing plant?
Following are some measures which a pharmaceutical industry must take to safeguard the working staff.
- Segregation of Staff
- Health Monitoring Team
- Training
Training may be on the following,
- Social Distancing
- Hand washing
- Use of sanitiser
- Use of Mask & Gloves
- On work precautions
4.0 Monitoring of Visitors
5.0 Monitoring of vehicles
6.0 General Instructions
Segregation of Staff
The first step which a pharmaceutical industry should take is to categorise the staff based on their engagement to the work. For this, staff can be divided into followingÂ
- Essential Staff
- Non-Essential Staff
Essential Staff
- Essential staff is the staff of the pharmaceutical industries which is physically required on the floor of the manufacturing plant and their involvement is essential for performing tasks in the pharmaceutical industries.
- Presence of Essential people is always required in the pharmaceutical manufacturing plant and they can not perform their duties from home.Â
- So the concept of work from home is not suitable for them.
Example
Some key examples of essential staff are given below (There may be many more,)
- Pharmacists
- Working staff for
- Manufacturing
- Packaging
- In-process control
- Quality ControlÂ
- Raw material storeÂ
- Security
- Canteen
- Housekeeping
- Engineering Staff
Also Read:
Role of pharmacist on the production floor.
Non-EssentialÂ
- Non-essential staff in the pharmaceutical industries are the people who can perform their duties from home and can communicate in the manufacturing plant using online platforms.
- It includes many supporting departments like Human resource, finance, planning etc.
 Health Monitoring Team
- The Human Resource department of every pharmaceutical industry should establish a Health monitoring team which should check all the staff on a regular basis.
- A qualified doctor should also be part of this team and should be available during working hours.
-  Any person having symptoms of severe cough, flu, fever etc should be examined by the Doctor and if found to be infected should be isolated in a separate area.
Immediate Actions
- If an infected person is found, separate him immediately.
- Immediately disinfect the area where he was working.
- Separate the persons who were engaged with the infected person and diagnosed them.
Health monitoring team should prepare a health form to collect the health data of all the employees and their family.
Training
- Most effective awareness about coronavirus prevention can be delivered through training.
- Â Training can educate the staff or people to keep themselves and their families safe.
Following training may be beneficial in the pharmaceutical industries.
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Work From Home
- Pharmaceutical industries should try to minimise the presence of working staff in the manufacturing plant.
- Essential staff can not perform their jobs from home but non-essential staff can perform their duties from home.
- So the non-essential staff should be trained to work from home.
- Work from home is the concept of working online from home.
- Different software and applications are used to complete the office work from home
- Staff should be properly trained to perform their duties from home using this software and applications.
- It will minimise the chances of contact with others and results in a reduction of people gathering.
Social Distancing
- All the staff or people present in the pharmaceutical industry should be aware of the concept of social distancing.
- People should be educated and trained through visual aids.
- Concept of Social distancing minimises the chances of exposure and being infected.
- 2 meter or 6 feet is considered a safe distance.
- The reason behind 2 meters is that usually sneezing droplets settle down within 2 meters.
- Avoid physical contact and be at a distance of 2 meters.
- In the break, hours discourage the gathering of staff.
- Define different lunch and dinner breaks timings for different departments.
- In lunch and dinner breaks try to utilize the outdoor facility.
- Minimise the setting of chairs around the dining tables.
- Increase the distance between the dining tables.
- Place labels on the floor at different gathering points at a distance of 2 meters or 6 feet and educate people to stand on these labels.
- This type of marking ensures the maintenance of the exact distance.
Hand washing
- Pharmaceutical industries should educate their staff to wash hands regularly.
- The recommended procedure for washing hands is as follow
- Make your hands wet with water.
- Apply some soap.
- Rub your hands with soap for 20 seconds.
- Again pour water on soapy hands and rinse thoroughly.
- Dry your hands.
Also Read:
How to prevent microbial growth in purified water.
Use of sanitiser
- All the working staff and people in the pharmaceutical industries should be educated to sanitize their hands after regular time intervals.
- Hand Sanitisers should be installed at different places so that it should easily be accessible to the people.
- For sanitization simply 70% IPA solution can be used.
Also Read:
- Pharmaceutical industries should install walkthrough sanitiser chambers at different places like the main entrance, canteen entrance etc.
- Pharmaceutical industries should establish a sanitization team to sanitize all the Commonly used areas regularly.
Use of Mask & Gloves
- All the working staff should be educated about the importance of wearing masks and gloves.
- Instructions should be displayed in writing at different places to wear masks and gloves.
- A monitoring team should be established to check the usage of masks and gloves.
- People should be trained about the disposal of masks and gloves after usage.
- Educate the people not to touch their eyes, nose and face while having gloves.
During the work precautions.
 During manufacturing and packaging operations in pharmaceutical industries, it may not be possible to keep the social distance of 2 meters or 6 feet so it is advised to take following protective measures,
- Wear a mask and gloves.
- Wear secondary gowning
- Wear protective shields.
- Try to avoid physical contact with each other.
- The temperature of the staff should be monitored at regular intervals with a temperature scanning gun.
- Before starting the work disinfect the floor and workplace and repeat the same practice during work after defined intervals.
- If dealing with objects receiving from outside try to disinfect it if possible.
- Material transfer trolleys etc should be disinfected before use.
- Working staff should be reduced by rotating the duties.
- Divide the working hours into various shifts to minimise the chances of rush
Monitoring of Visitors
- Pharmaceutical industries should try to minimise the number of visitors.
- If any visitor comes, try to deal with the online video linking system.
- Â For this allocates a visitors room near to the main entrance.
- Instruct the visitors to use the walk-through sanitising chamber.
- Check their body temperature by a temperature scanning gun.
- Provide them masks and gloves.
- Disinfect the visitor’s room after the regular time interval.
- Monitoring of vehicles
- Any vehicle coming from outside to the pharmaceutical industry should be sanitized to minimize the risk of contamination.The driver of the vehicle should be asked to pass through a sanitizing chamber.
- Disinfects all the indoor and outdoor areas regularly.
- Do not share mobile phones.
- Try to avoid the use of a finger to operate lifts.
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General Instructions
- Display different visual aids at different places to educate the people.
- Do not use your hands to open the door, instead attach a foot handle to open the door with the foot.
- Try to keep open the frequently used door. (Not for manufacturing classified rooms)
- Disinfect the door handles regularly.
- Disinfects all the indoor and outdoor areas regularly.
- Do not share mobile phones.
- Try to avoid the use of a finger to operate lifts.