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PostPosted: Sat Mar 07, 2020 11:26 am 
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Some advice from Choicequote Insurance :?


Taxi Drivers And Coronavirus

https://www.choicequote.co.uk/news/taxi ... ronavirus/

How worried should taxi drivers be about the spread of coronavirus? Is there anything that can be done to protect yourself while driving?

Everybody who frequently encounters other members of the public is likely to be more at risk of contracting contagious illnesses. And while the novel coronavirus CoVid-19 hasn’t collectively gripped the UK yet, all the talk is that it’s only a matter of time before it does.

Taxi drivers are often the first people travellers see after walking through the doors of an airport or stepping out of a train station. It’s perhaps most alarming that the first reported death as a result of coronavirus in Thailand was that of a taxi driver, with reported cases of tourists infecting both taxi and bus drivers.

Is it possible to avoid the risk of contracting illness when you’re dealing with members of the public day in, day out?

Will the self-employed suffer the most?
You never know who you are picking up when you take a fare.

As coronavirus spreads, it could be passed from person to person anytime, anywhere in the UK. No longer will it be just drivers on airport runs who are prone to infection. You’ll need to protect yourself wherever you’re working.

Can you do anything about it?
The government have been advising ‘self-isolation’. This seems sensible, but not so much for taxi drivers, as many of you are self-employed. Even though the government are rushing through legislation to allow statutory sick pay from day 1 for employees, that won’t help you to keep income coming in if you’re self-employed and fall ill.

Responsible drivers who fall ill will want to stay away from other people – but as things stand, you will be out of pocket until you return to work.

Good hygiene – and not touching your face
Wearing a face mask might seem extreme, and it won’t necessarily help healthy people to avoid illness. So, what can you do to protect yourself from passengers who may be carrying the virus – and to protect them picking up illnesses from you?

1. Avoid direct contact with other people and their belongings. Not the easiest thing to do when you’re ferrying people around. However, try to position passengers as far away from direct contact as possible during your journey. If you must handle bags or goods, use a tissue when picking up handles, and make sure you wipe your hands with a clean wipe or tissue afterwards.

2. Wash your hands. The most widely promoted thing to do to avoid the virus spreading is to thoroughly wash your hands, for at least 20 seconds, on a frequent basis. However, when you’re in a cab all day, this isn’t so easy to do – and you’ll be handling money, too… If possible, carry antibacterial gel and wipes in your taxi. Use them before and after handling change. Dispose of wipes carefully whenever possible, in-between journeys.

3. Have a supply of tissues in your cab. They are useful for you and your passengers, to catch coughs and sneezes.

4. Sneeze into your elbow – not your hands. It’s easier to spread the virus touching your own face and other people with your hands.

5. Don’t touch your face. When you’re driving a taxi, this is easier to practice than it might be for office workers, for example. You’ll have your hands on the wheel and be concentrating on the road, so you’re less likely to be engaged in compulsive, unnecessary touching of your face. However, if you need to adjust your glasses or contain an itch, grab a tissue before doing so.

6. Be friendly but forceful with passengers. If a passenger shows signs of illness, make sure they follow basic hygiene rules in place for everybody. Hand them tissues and wipes if needed. Ask them to contain coughs and sneezes. The last thing you want is to become ill and possibly spread illness to other passengers – so make sure they know that.

These are all straightforward, sensible precautions. Think about them and don’t forget to do them where possible.

Sadly, for workers in the public space, there’s no magic bullet to stop illness from spreading. We can only hope that the virus is contained as much as possible, and a vaccine is found sooner rather than later. Until then, taxi drivers will need to take the usual precautions to avoid becoming ill and missing out on valuable income.


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PostPosted: Sat Mar 07, 2020 8:08 pm 
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4. Sneeze into your elbow – not your hands. It’s easier to spread the virus touching your own face and other people with your hands.

I've never seen that happen. :-s

That said well done to Insurance company for compiling that advice. =D>

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 10, 2020 4:26 pm 
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some of the things I have been telling the taxi drivers to do is 1 pay for your petrol or diesel to the pound do not take change from the petrol station 2 carry antibiotics kitchen spray in the cab. keep cleaning door handles and seats quick spray 3 any money they take get the people to place it into a small plastic bowl of yours then when they've gone spray it.

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PostPosted: Sat Mar 14, 2020 4:14 pm 
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MR T wrote:
some of the things I have been telling the taxi drivers to do is 1 pay for your petrol or diesel to the pound do not take change from the petrol station 2 carry antibiotics kitchen spray in the cab. keep cleaning door handles and seats quick spray 3 any money they take get the people to place it into a small plastic bowl of yours then when they've gone spray it.


Be easier wearing a thin pair of driving gloves.


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PostPosted: Sat Mar 14, 2020 11:49 pm 
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bloodnock wrote:
MR T wrote:
some of the things I have been telling the taxi drivers to do is 1 pay for your petrol or diesel to the pound do not take change from the petrol station 2 carry antibiotics kitchen spray in the cab. keep cleaning door handles and seats quick spray 3 any money they take get the people to place it into a small plastic bowl of yours then when they've gone spray it.


Be easier wearing a thin pair of driving gloves.

Viruses can be active outside the body for hours, even days. Disinfectants, liquids, wipes, gels and creams containing alcohol are all useful at getting rid of them – but they are not quite as good as normal soap.
When I shared the information above using Twitter, it went viral. I think I have worked out why. Health authorities have been giving us two messages: once you have the virus there are no drugs that can kill it or help you get rid of it. But also, wash your hands to stop the virus spreading. This seems odd. You can’t, even for a million dollars, get a drug for the coronavirus – but your grandmother’s bar of soap kills the virus.
So why does soap work so well on the Sars-CoV-2, the coronavirus and indeed most viruses? The short story: because the virus is a self-assembled nanoparticle in which the weakest link is the lipid (fatty) bilayer. Soap dissolves the fat membrane and the virus falls apart like a house of cards and dies – or rather, we should say it becomes inactive as viruses aren’t really alive.
FAQs: Facts about COVID-19 as per World Health Organization (Photos)



With COVID-19 becoming a global health threat and the novel coronavirus spreading to every continent except Antarctica, the World Health Organization (WHO) has prepared a list of Q&As to address common concerns. Click through to take a look.
(Pictured) The Public Service Hall is disinfected to prevent the spread of COVID-19, in Tbilisi, Georgia, on March 3.
All captions taken from WHO website. The organization is assessing ongoing research on the ways COVID-19 is spread and will continue to share new findings.
The slightly longer story is that most viruses consist of three key building blocks: ribonucleic acid (RNA), proteins and lipids. A virus-infected cell makes lots of these building blocks, which then spontaneously self-assemble to form the virus. Critically, there are no strong covalent bonds holding these units together, which means you do not necessarily need harsh chemicals to split those units apart. When an infected cell dies, all these new viruses escape and go on to infect other cells. Some end up also in the airways of lungs.
When you cough, or especially when you sneeze, tiny droplets from the airways can fly up to 10 metres. The larger ones are thought to be the main coronavirus carriers and they can go at least two metres.

_______________
These tiny droplets end on surfaces and often dry out quickly. But the viruses remain active. Human skin is an ideal surface for a virus. It is “organic” and the proteins and fatty acids in the dead cells on the surface interact with the virus.
When you touch, say, a steel surface with a virus particle on it, it will stick to your skin and hence get transferred on to your hands. If you then touch your face, especially your eyes, nostrils or mouth, you can get infected. And it turns out that most people touch their face once every two to five minutes.


It is recommended that you wash your hands for at least 20 seconds
Washing the virus off with water alone might work. But water is not good at competing with the strong, glue-like interactions between the skin and the virus. Water isn’t enough.
Soapy water is totally different. Soap contains fat-like substances known as amphiphiles, some of which are structurally very similar to the lipids in the virus membrane. The soap molecules “compete” with the lipids in the virus membrane. This is more or less how soap also removes normal dirt from the skin.
The soap not only loosens the “glue” between the virus and the skin but also the Velcro-like interactions that hold the proteins, lipids and RNA in the virus together.


Soap is the most effective method of protecting yourself
Alcohol-based products, which pretty much includes all “disinfectant” products, contain a high-percentage alcohol solution (typically 60-80% ethanol) and kill viruses in a similar fashion. But soap is better because you only need a fairly small amount of soapy water, which, with rubbing, covers your entire hand easily. Whereas you need to literally soak the virus in ethanol for a brief moment, and wipes or rubbing a gel on the hands does not guarantee that you soak every corner of the skin on your hands effectively enough.
So, soap is the best, but do please use alcohol-based sanitiser when soap is not handy or practical.
• Pall Thordarson is a professor of chemistry at the University of New South Wales, Sydney

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 8:29 am 
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I've put this link on the other Coronavirus thread, but add it here because it's the data the gov are relying on.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperi ... OfeoQIyddo

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 8:17 pm 
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Sussex wrote:
Quote:
4. Sneeze into your elbow – not your hands. It’s easier to spread the virus touching your own face and other people with your hands.

I've never seen that happen. :-s

That said well done to Insurance company for compiling that advice. =D>


nor me..usually the first indication of a passengers sneeze is a sudden Achoooo...followed by the hair on the top of the back of yer head parting and you ending up wi a pair of damp germ soaked cranium fins....Gross :-&


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 11:34 pm 
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Sussex wrote:
Quote:
4. Sneeze into your elbow – not your hands. It’s easier to spread the virus touching your own face and other people with your hands.




I think it was Dr Sarah Jarvis on Radio 2 who mentioned it a couple of years ago where I first heard it. I quite often sneeze spontaneously if I look at the sun through glass (rather hard not to when you drive a cab for a living!) I don’t always have a tissue handy. I end up with a silver elbow though :lol:


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PostPosted: Wed Mar 18, 2020 8:23 pm 
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If that's the advice I'm more than happy to follow.

Just never heard of it before.

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