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California Today

Why Workplace Hygiene Should Be More Than Just Hand-Washing

Wednesday: An expert says businesses should research their own best practices.

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A quiet morning at Stanford University on Monday.Credit...Philip Pacheco/Getty Images

Good morning.

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When I called David Levine, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, he was working on figuring out how to use Zoom, a video conferencing application, to teach.

“I’ve been preparing for this, but it turns out I have more to do,” he told me.

U.C. Berkeley is one of a rising number of universities that have canceled in-person classes in an effort to slow what experts describe as the largely inevitable spread of the coronavirus.

Large employers across California have taken similar steps, ordering employees to work from home or postpone all but the most vital travel.

[Read more about working from home in the age of the coronavirus.]

As The San Francisco Chronicle noted, there’s no clear endpoint for many of the measures. The situation, as we’ve reported, is changing at an almost overwhelming pace.

But I was curious about what will stick after the states of emergency are drawn down.

I spoke with Mr. Levine about workplace hygiene and why major employers should research best practices for themselves. Here’s our conversation, edited and condensed:

Tell me about what’s at the front of your mind in the midst of this outbreak.

So I’m an economist, I work a lot on health — on behavior change, including hand-washing.

What’s clear is that everybody knows they should wash their hands after they use the toilet. Years of research have found that people don’t, but they do if someone is watching.

And what my research has found is that organizational routine is important.

When you walk into a doctor’s office, there’s often hand sanitizer, but it shouldn’t be a question of whether people use it.

In a business, we also need standard procedures for cleaning surfaces, which require schedules, monitoring, incentives and sufficient supplies — you need this for everything a lot of customers or staff are touching.

My last point would be, good hygiene could help make all Americans a lot safer. But by itself, the U.S. cannot protect itself from a global outbreak. The U.S. and other industrialized nations should be working rapidly to subsidize hygiene practices around the globe.

So that’s all sort of what should have happened or should be happening. What are you actually seeing in the work force? And could some of those things become a new normal?

In the short run, the C.D.C. and others have recommended social distancing and working from home is an important part of that. All the work from home is sort of an interesting experiment.

During big transit strikes, for instance, some people find new ways to commute and they don’t go back.

So organizations may find that allowing work from home is at least as effective as the old ways. I don’t expect it to be universal, but I think there will be some institutional learning that comes from this tragedy.

What would our economy look like if that’s the case?

For as long as the internet has been around, there’s been increasing opportunities for dispersed teams to work together. This disruption may accelerate that movement, but it didn’t invent it.

Do you have any advice for big employers?

What I stressed earlier is the C.D.C. should be doing research.

But big employers, like Uber and McDonald’s, have a big incentive to research, too, and determine their best practices. Ride-share companies need to figure out what combination of tissues and hand sanitizer in the back seat and wiping down seats they should do.

Every senior living facility has the capability to become a tragic news story. To a lesser extent, every grocery store chain and ride-share company and fast-food company could become known as a center of epidemic spread. So they have an incentive to disseminate new routines.

Any other thoughts?

Workers are going to be going to work because they can’t afford to take time off. It would be an excellent time for the federal government to use some combination of Medicare and unemployment insurance to pay for sick leave and Covid-19 testing.

[Read more about how the coronavirus is spurring a renewed push for federally mandated sick leave.]

Because having someone avoid testing so they can keep going to work is a guaranteed route for very rapid spread of the virus.

When we’re thinking about some sort of stimulus, we should think about directing it to cover the sick leave and testing of those affected. It would cover the right people because if there aren’t very many sick people, the government won’t have to write that many checks.


  • If you read one story, make it this chilling account of how a series of missed chances by the federal government prevented wider testing in the outbreak’s early days, when containment would have been easier. [The New York Times]

  • “We’re just saying our prayers.” Among the most vulnerable to the illness are people experiencing homelessness. At shelters, infections can spread rapidly and care is hard to come by. [The New York Times]

  • It’s official: Coachella and Stagecoach have been postponed until October. [The New York Times]

And here’s how to get a refund. [The Desert Sun]

  • School is where low-income children often get food they might not have access to at home. But when schools are closed, they often miss out. [Civil Eats]

  • Here are the latest updates. [The New York Times]

One more thing: What do you want to know about the coronavirus outbreak in California? Email us your questions at catoday@nytimes.com.


We often link to sites that limit access for nonsubscribers. We appreciate your reading Times coverage, but we also encourage you to support local news if you can.

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A photo of Nia Wilson, right, is displayed at a news conference with her father, Ansar El Muhammad, far left, and her mother, Alicia Grayson, in San Francisco in August 2018.Credit...Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
  • The man who fatally stabbed Nia Wilson on a BART platform in 2018 was convicted of first-degree murder on Tuesday. Next the jury must decide whether he’s criminally insane. [The New York Times]

  • Here are updates from the Democratic presidential primaries. (States, including Michigan, hit the polls on Tuesday.) [The New York Times]

  • If Earth is starting to feel less than ideal, but you’d never be able to give up your salad to live Mars, the findings of a new study may be of interest to you. [The New York Times]

  • The Dynamic Miss Faye Carol might be the hardest-working live musician in the East Bay. She’s also one of the most established. [KQED]


California Today goes live at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com. Were you forwarded this email? Sign up for California Today here and read every edition online here.

Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, graduated from U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter, @jillcowan.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.

Jill Cowan is the California Today correspondent, keeping tabs on the most important things happening in her home state every day. More about Jill Cowan

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