[katieHaylor (OP)]

Maureen says:

I’m a practice manager at a dental practice in Devon, busy making plans for the resumption of dentistry.  One thing that has baffled me in all the reported and visuals in how Covid 19 is being tackled is the spraying/almost fumigation of buildings, work places, and areas that had not been used by a single individual in 5/6 weeks. 

From my understanding, 72 hrs is the longest the virus can survive on plastic and much shorter periods on other surfaces such as cloth, steel etc. Is there really any logical reason to be doing all that spraying and disinfecting?  I would have thought a normal deep clean to remove all dust that would be needed at any business that has been closed for up to 6 weeks would be sufficient.

What do you think?

[Bored chemist]

Good point.
It could be bad reporting, or people trying to "advertise" their cleaning services.

As a dental surgery, it needs a better scrub down than a car repair works,  but there's no reason why covid should make any difference to the type of cleanup.

[alancalverd]

Logic is one thing, the Care Quality Commission is another.

I visited a soon-to-open dental practice in a beautiful Georgian building to check out the x-ray equipment a year ago. They had just been inspected and told to change the light fitting in the reception area in case dust should fall from the chandelier into the open mouth of a patient. The inspector made several other idiotic demands, failed to spot a few obvious hazards, then remarked, as she walked past a deep picture window "I could fall out of that". Nobody said a word.