Cleaning tips to keep your workspace safe amid coronavirus worries

(FOX 2) - Cleaning crews at offices across metro Detroit doing the same are putting in extra work to keep employees safe amid coronavirus concerns.

Jeff Kelosky with Stratus Building Solutions says one-time cleaning orders have quadrupled in the last few weeks. 

"If you have a key card, the key that you have, those don't often get disinfected," he said. "And multiple people are touching those areas as well."

Stopping the spread of bacteria or virus isn't just about cleaning your chairs, desks and keyboards, the biggest offender is something you sleep next to and rarely let go of. Your phone.

"We don't often disinfect our phone," said Kelosky. "We touch our phone over 2,000 times a day and it carries a lot of different bacteria and viruses. So you go from having your phone on your face, it's on your hands, then your rubbing your eyes."

Kelosky says a throwback lesson from grade school Is being ignored.  Washing your hands with antibacterial soap. And with warm water only. 

"It's important again to make sure you have warm water, make sure that water gets warm," he said. "Cold is not good enough. It's effective but it's not as effective as warm water."

FOX 2: "How many people actually wash their hands this thoroughly?"

"Not a lot, not a lot, studies show that it's very few people that are washing that good. So there is a good amount of lather you want but it's still not long enough so in your head you should be saying your ABCs."

He recommends the Clorox wipes which are running low at stores across the country.  The back label says it can help against the human coronavirus.  

"That is true but this is a new strain so it's a different strain of coronavirus," he said. "So the science is not out yet on having a vaccine for it, or what's properly going to kill the actual virus."

Disinfecting is critical but the number of times you touch your face may be transferring the bad bugs and virus right into your system.  The CDC says we touch our face 16 times an hour.  

 And finally, how are you wiping down the surfaces?

"Instead of typically how you might do it at home or how you're used to wiping something, you just kind of go around and around and up and down," he said.

FOX 2: "That's not what you want to do?" 

"That's not what you want to do. If you have not properly disinfected something it's going to spread the virus, spread the germ, spread the bacteria to other parts of the surface," he said. "So the use of one way wiping, come one way helps disinfect that a lot more effectively."

After you wash your hands, experts say that you need to dry them off.  Experts say damp hands let the bacteria and virus thrive in your hand.