Chia-Yu “Peter” Wong was a mild-mannered custodian at Joseph M. Demko Elementary earlier this year. But when the pandemic arrived in March and thrust sanitation into the spotlight, he became a superhero.
Now, it’s his job to use high-tech tools to clean every nook and cranny of his school every day to prevent more people from contracting COVID-19.
“I feel good because I need to protect everyone,” Wong said.
The COVID-19 pandemic has put custodians such as Wong on the front lines of school safety. The Gazette sat down with Wong and his coworkers as part of National School Safety Week to hear how the pandemic has changed their jobs.
More than just mops
Wong is one of four custodians at Joseph M. Demko, said principal Les Kirchner. Earlier this year, he and the other custodians helped staff prepare the school for students by deploying hand sanitizer stations and directional arrows. The custodians are now an essential element of school safety, sanitizing every room and surface at least once a day – three times a day, in the case of washrooms.
When it comes to a virus like SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19), you won’t get anywhere if you simply douse a surface with virucidal compounds, explained Clyde Krier, assistant manager of facilities services for St. Albert Public. That surface has dirt and oils on it that will protect viruses from your cleaning sprays unless you remove them.
That makes cleaning a two-step process, Krier said. First, you sanitize a surface by wiping the dirt and grime off it with conventional cleaners such as soap and water. You then disinfect the surface with a virucidal compound, one that you let stand for several minutes to give it time to do its work.
In the early days of the pandemic, all this had to be done by hand, Krier said – that’s two wipes for every desk, chair, counter and toy in a room.
The district finally got the electrostatic disinfecting guns it ordered back in July in late September, Krier said. These $1,300 devices, which look like something a space marine might sport as a sidearm, buzz softly as they send out a mist of electrically charged droplets that stick to every surface, ensuring proper coverage. Those drops contain a thyme-based virucide that kills about 99.9 per cent of all viruses within a minute of contact. The drops also curl paper, so you can’t use the guns if there are any open books lying around.
Wong said he and his fellow custodians clean different parts of their school each night on a rotation. He uses a green cloth to sanitize, a yellow one to disinfect and a red one to disinfect bathrooms to prevent cross-contamination.
“I need to pay more attention to every single corner,” Wong said, as one missed spot could result in a sick kid or teacher.
Krier and Kirchner said custodians also have to top up hand sanitizer dispensers, launder the microfibre rags they’ve distributed to each class and mop up all the regular messes that pop up.
Wong said he spends about an hour extra each day on cleaning due to COVID-19, and could finish a room in about 15 minutes.
If an actual case shows up in a school, Krier said a team of about four custodians moves in wearing N95 respirators, gloves, goggles and coveralls to sanitize and disinfect as much of the building as necessary, often using a cart-based electrostatic sprayer to do so. Crews would need about eight hours to do a top-to-bottom disinfection of a school like Joseph M. Demko.
All this costs money. Krier said he has yet to tally up the bill for these additional measures, but noted that the district has spent about $52,000 on electrostatic spray guns alone.
Team effort
Kirchner said school sanitization is a team effort. Just as staff alert custodians to messes, the custodians tell staff when those messes get out of hand. (He recently had teachers remind boys to work on their aim after custodians reported a lot of urine around the toilets, for example.)
Kirchner and Krier praised custodians for stepping up to the challenge of COVID-19, and said staff and students appreciated their efforts.
“These guys are the superheroes right now,” Krier said.
“They are the guys out there making sure our staff are safe and I think they’re doing a darn good job.”
Wong said he was glad to see kids back in school this fall, knowing that he was able to keep the school clean for them.
“I will protect you guys,” he said.
