Austria will not rest easy. After the holiday resort of Ischgl hit the headlines as a hot spot after a bar supposedly played a major role in spreading the virus throughout Europe, two mail distribution centres have now also been closed. In the Hagenbrunn distribution centre near Vienna, 68 of the 650 employees tested positive for the corona. At the Inzersdorf distribution centre, 70 employees are currently infected. According to the newspaper Krone.at, a temporary employment agency is said to have brought infected employees to the distribution centres, but it has not yet been conclusively determined whether infected employees also delivered parcels and letters.
Fear of a renewed wave of corona is high
In Germany, too, the parcel delivery company DPD recently had to close a parcel centre in the Heinsberg district due to a massive corona outbreak. More than 80 of the 400 employees had previously tested positive for the corona virus.
As far as scientists are concerned these are not coincidences. Wherever people work together in a closed room, so-called aerosols (tiny saliva particles) also spread through the air. These particles are released when breathing, speaking and coughing and in sick people, viruses and bacteria adhere to the invisible suspended particles. If a sick employee breathes out infectious aerosols and other employees breathe them in unnoticed, the chain of infection takes its course! The aim must therefore be to prevent, as far as possible, the contamination of breathing air in the numerous parcel centres, which are working at full capacity during the pandemic.
Trotec has developed the right solution: High Frequency Air Purification
Safe working areas in parcel centres, which are free of potentially infectious aerosols in air, are created by the new TAC V+ high-frequency air purifier. As a specialist in room air filtration and Europe’s leading company in the development of air purification devices, Trotec developed this air purifier in Heinsberg immediately after the first corona infections became known. The mobile high-frequency air purifier TAC V+, which is equipped with a special HEPA particulate filter, protects people in closed rooms from the danger of infection via the air in the room, a fact which has now been confirmed by the Robert Koch Institute[1]. The greatest risk of infection in parcel logistics is not contact infection via contaminated parcels for example. Nor is it the droplet infection against which current social distancing rules throughout Europe seek to mitigate. Indeed, it is roughly only 10 percent of corona infections that occur through direct contact. In contrast, half of all infections are due to the inhalation of infectious aerosols. These float invisibly in the air in closed rooms for several hours.
Hundreds of employees work in the parcel centres with employees working at parcel belts more or less sharing the indoor air. If only one person is infected with the coronavirus, the consequences are quite predictable: The floating and infectious particles spread in the environment due to the air circulation and are inhaled by other employees. The disaster takes its course!
However, the problem does not only affect postal distribution centres in Austria or individual companies – but the entire industry. A renewed corona outbreak could hit any mail service provider. With a seven-figure parcel volume per year, Trotec knows the requirements and work flows in dispatch logistics only too well. Upon request, Trotec provides interested dispatch service providers with infection protection concepts tailored to their individual requirements free of charge. For the protection of employees and to prevent corona-induced closure!
Aerosols – the invisible danger of infection especially in the parcel sector
When we breathe, speak or cough, we not only emit large, visible droplets into the room in a kind of “drizzle”, but also and to a much greater extent, tiny aerosols. While the weight of the large droplets cause them to sink to the ground after only about 1.5 metres (this is the reason for the social distancing rule of 1.5 metres), infectious aerosols measuring only a thousandth of a millimetre actually remain in the air “for several hours”. Measures therefore, such as rules of social distancing, smaller and spatially separated groups and more frequent hand washing alone do not protect against the transmission of the virus. Aerosols released when speaking spread invisibly through the circulating indoor air for hours and are then inhaled. The aim must therefore be to prevent the flow of indoor air from in working areas with several people as far as possible. And this is achieved by the combined use of a TAC-V+ air purifier.
Virus-free breathing air in all areas of package processing: The TAC V+ air purifier
With the new TAC V+ air purifier, Trotec has developed a worldwide unique indoor air purifier with HEPA thermal fashion contamination technology. The air in closed rooms is circulated and cleaned just as effectively by the mobile TAC V+ as is otherwise only the case in hygiene-sensitive clean room environments and hospital operating rooms. This is made possible by the elevated air performance of the air purifier and a new type of HEPA thermal decontamination. In this way, even a parcel service centre can be kept virtually virus and germ-free in the sorting and bulky goods area as well as in the loading and unloading areas, regardless of the number of people.
What may sound rather technical in theory, turns out to be rather uncomplicated in practice. The room air is sucked in near the floor, freed from bacteria and viruses by the HEPA filter and then released back into the room as germ-free clean air. No installation, no complicated connection process. Simply plug in and provide the highest possible protection against infection!
Maximum clean room air at the workplace means minimum risk of infection for employees
Social distance rules, face masks and increased cleaning and disinfection procedures are – considered in isolation – all sensible measures! But they do not offer any protection against infectious aerosols, as these rise like smoke up to several metres into the air and only after hours do they slowly and widely sink to the ground. Even behind supposedly safe spit protection walls.
The risk of employees becoming infected with the corona virus via the room air even when all safety and hygiene measures are observed is reduced to almost zero by using a TAC V+ air purifier with virus filter! Wherever the mobile air purifier TAC V+ is placed, it creates clean and virus-filtered “clean air areas”.
You can’t ask for more, and you should demand no less for the protection of employees:
- Compliance with all requirements and hygiene regulations (minimum distances, compulsory masks, spit-protection walls, disinfection measures etc.)
- Air purifiers to reduce the risk of aerogenic infection
Interesting facts about the H14 HEPA particulate filter with a rate of permeability ≤ 0.005 %
With their first-class filter efficiency and innovative performance characteristics, the H14 virus filters specially developed by Trotec for the TAC V+ and TES 200 air purifiers are rather impressive. With their transmission level of just 0.005% and separation level of 99.995%, they offer 10 times higher separation compared to conventional H13 filters. Thanks to these first-class properties, H14 high-performance filters are even used to produce clean air in operating theatres and in other comparably hygiene-sensitive areas. The greatest possible safety, therefore, to protect employees in the parcel and logistics industry from the dangers of infection
All H14 high-performance filters offered by Trotec meet the highest quality standards, which are obligatory for the filtration of bacteria and viruses:
- Each H14 high-performance filter is individually tested and given its own serial number.
- The test report is enclosed in duplicate as a certificate with each H14 filter.
- The original test certificate can be filed away and a copy attached to the air purification device if required.
- H14 HEPA high performance filters are tested according to EN 1822 and EN 60335-2-69.
Trotec has set up its own advice centre for shipping service providers, logistics companies and public institutions on all questions relating to infection protection:
Trotec GmbH
Mr Jochem Weingartz
Telephone: +49 2452 962-137
[1] Robert-Koch-Institute, SARS-CoV-2 Steckbrief zur Coronavirus-Krankheit (COVD-19), Last viewed: 15 May 2020
