Colleagues,
An earlier version of this message contained the general phone number for UCI Occupational and Environmental Health. The direct phone number for reporting concerns about COVID-19 symptoms or exposure is their clinic number, 949-824-8685.
We are now five weeks into our COVID-19 Phase 2 Ramp-Up. We hope that many of you have been able to return to productive, if scaled back, research. In the time since we instituted our guidelines we have had opportunities to test compliance, including instances of COVID-19 exposure and EH&S inspections. The following message is not intended to be comprehensive. It recaps important points that we have identified as having been incompletely adopted to date. PLEASE READ THE COMPLETE MESSAGE AS IT IS VERY LIKELY THERE IS NEW INFORMATION FOR YOU.
If you are a School of Medicine chair with research faculty or a researcher yourself, please read this:
You must, as appropriate, submit your own Qualtrics Research Activities Ramp-Up Form, and for each faculty’s Qualtrics Research Activities Ramp Up Plan, approve or return for modifications and re-review. Approved PDFs of the Qualtrics Research Activities Ramp Up Plan, along with indication of department chair approval, must be forwarded to Emily Dawidoff (edawidof@hs.uci.edu). If they are not, these laboratories may be subject to University restrictions or closure.
If you are a School of Medicine principal investigator with a research laboratory and individuals onsite during phase 2, you need to follow School of Medicine guidelines for the Working Well Application (see below). If your laboratory researchers are only on the UCIMC campus and are checking in through that health application, at this time, you do not need to complete a second form for the campus. If you are in Gross Hall, Beckman Laser Center, or Sprague Hall you will have received Ramp-Up guidelines from Aileen Anderson, Tom Milner, or Marian Waterman, respectively, regarding your Ramp-Up space.
You and your laboratory staff*, approved by you to be onsite, must have completed UCLC Core Laboratory Safety Training and UCLC Returning To Work training. In the near future, HR will require this training of all UCI employees. This is checked for compliance and you should have printed certificates of completion of this course available in the laboratory for each approved individual.
You must have completed a Qualtrics Research Activities Ramp Up Plan, downloaded a PDF of the plan and submitted to your chair for review and approval. This is the case whether you were approved for Phase 1 research or not. When approved, the chair must forward that PDF to Emily Dawidoff (edawidof@hs.uci.edu) in the Dean’s Office. This plan is your safety plan! It must be POSTED in an obvious place and your laboratory staff must sign it and know where it is and understand the key COVID-19 safety points within it. This PLAN MUST be available for EH&S inspection. You should check with your chair to be sure that he or she reviewed and submitted your approved plan to Emily Dawidoff (edawidof@hs.uci.edu).
Your laboratory must have designated a laboratory safety representative. This person can assist you in complying with Ramp-Up and, potentially, Ramp-Down guidance. The name of this individual and their UCI email must be submitted by you to Emily Dawidoff (edawidof@hs.uci.edu).
Names and NetID of laboratory staff who are approved (by you, see * above) to be at work should have been emailed to Rachel Corell (rcorell@hs.uci.edu) with the subject line WORKING WELL. If you are a PI returning to work, your name should also be submitted. Those names are recorded by us and submitted to HR. Those individuals will receive a daily health check Working Well email/phone message. This system will soon be implemented by HR university-wide so that individuals must report daily. They should respond whether they are coming to work or not, and they will receive an acknowledgment. IF THEY ARE COMING TO WORK, they must forward that acknowledgment, or a screen shot, to the laboratory safety representative. The laboratory safety representative must record this in an Excel spreadsheet so that your laboratory has a daily record of who was well and onsite. We will check that this record is kept by directly contacting your safety representative. Please make sure they know who they are and what they should be doing. If your laboratory members are not receiving the daily Working Well message, they should contact Rachel Corell (rcorell@hs.uci.edu) and so inform her.
Each School of Medicine laboratory safety representative should have been issued a No-Touch Thermometer. If you have not, please contact Jeff Dillon (jdillon@uci.edu), SOM Director of Facilities Management, with the name of your PI and request that one be delivered to you. You are responsible for its care and cleaning. Make sure your laboratory members know how to use it. It must remain in the laboratory.
IF YOU (FACULTY, STAFF, POSTDOC or STUDENT) feel any of the Working Well described symptoms of COVID-19, or if you have concerns about contact with an individual who has tested positive for COVID-19, please follow these steps:
FACULTY, POSTDOCS OR STAFF ON THE UCI CAMPUS: contact UCI Occupational and Environmental Health (https://hr.uci.edu/disaster-relief/report-known-cases.php; 949-824-8685). Here is the process: on the website, you will be directed to fill out a form, you will later be contacted and given an opportunity to provide information. If you pass the threshold to be tested, you will be directed to a physician who will interview you and recommend, or not, that you be tested. We have been told these responses occur within 24 hours. IF YOU ARE IN THE MEDICAL CENTER, CONTACT OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH (714-456-8300).
STUDENTS ON THE UCI CAMPUS: contact student health (949-824-5304) and ask to speak with the triage nurse.
If you have had issues obtaining PPE or deliveries, please let us know by contacting Emily Dawidoff (edawidof@hs.uci.edu). If we do not know, we cannot assist you in addressing your issues.
Do not flush sanitizing tissues down the toilet. They do not dissociate in water. They have already caused a few major plumbing issues on the campus.
If you want to Report a COVID-19 Safety Concern, inform your PI, or you can contact Environmental Health and Safety (https://www.ehs.uci.edu/apps/hr/). If you wish to remain anonymous in your reporting, the online form allows you to omit your contact information and remain anonymous.
Stay Safe, |
