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Is the United States Postal Service protecting its workers from SARS-COV-2?

Last week, I delivered a few packages at my local United States Postal Service. The business seemed usually quite for a late Friday afternoon in one of the busiest USPS business centers in Southern California.

I noticed that postal workers are not wearing protecting masks or gloves.
With the uncertainty of the rapidly spreading of the vurus, it looks careless from USPS to have their workers deal directly with the customers without being protected. 

According to all advices from health professionals and government channels, it is recommended to “keep a distance of 6 feet. ” 

Workers are a few feet away from customers, which led me to ask an employee whose name I ommitted because the proper channel for information is at the corporate level, a USPS employee said. 

Why they are not wearing protecting masks and gloves? she said, the USPS is not proving any and mask are not available at stores. 

“Few customers asked me the same, they should, she said.

Inmediately, I started writing this article, “Safety measures by employers to protect workers.”

I visited several post offices around Orange County, and just a few workers were wearing glove, but no masks. 

If the risk of contagion is so high, and only takes a customer to cough or sneeze in front to a postal worker, which by consequence will contaminate the counter and every inch of space near the postal worker, and everyone in the room, why not take extreme measures to protect postal workers? 

Everyone should know that sneeze’s droplets travels at a extraordinary speed.

According to Live Science
“During a good sneeze, up to 40,000 droplets of saliva may be expelled from the throat and some of them fly out of the mouth at speeds of up to over  200 miles per hour.
Most of the larger, heavier drops fall quickly to the floor under the influence of gravity. The smaller and lighter particles (those that are five microns or less across) are less affected by gravity and can stay airborne almost indefinitely as they are caught up in and dispersed by the room’s airflow.”

If the person is infected, there are 40,000 possible SARS-COV-2’s droplets in a single sneeze, with hundreds of thousand viruses per droplet.
To get clarity of the scope of the risks of postal workers.

UsPS network accepted more than 13.2 billion letters, cards, flats, and packages for delivery, exceeding 12.7 billion, accepted for delivery during the same timeframe in 2020.

With this many letters and packages handled by the USPS’s workers, we should have seen millions of postal workers with SARS-COV-2 and a few hundred thousands dead by COVID-19 .

The University of California, Los Angeles, on March 20, released a study on contamination on surfaces.

” The study attempted to mimic the virus being deposited onto everyday surfaces in a household or hospital setting by an infected person through coughing or touching objects, for example. The scientists then investigated how long the virus remained infectious on these surfaces.”

According to the study, the virus can survive up to 24 hours on cardboard.

The material of choice for shipping is cardboard. Postal workers are continuously handing packages made of cardboard material.

To protect postal workers, the USPS should consider providing protecting gear to its employees until the SARS-COV-2 spread is contained.

I wanted to get some insights of the scope of the risk and contacted the
USPS Corporate Communications Officer Media Relations Evelina B. Ramirez. 

I sent her a list of questions I needed; both to  help  postal workers to work in a safe environment during this coronavirus pandemic and to raise awareness of the situation. 

The question were simple and direct:

Hi Evelina
Mi nombre is Marivel Guzman, I’m a freelance journalist working on an article about “safety measures to protect postal workers”

My dateline is ASAP.
I have some questions regarding United Postal Service business center, at 3101 W Sunflower Ave, Santa Ana, CA 92799

Would you be so kind to provide me with this information?

How many employees does this location currently employ?

How many packages and letters, this location process in an average week?

What security measures are being put in place by the USPS to protect employees against COVI-19?

How many employees called sick since the outbreak was announced, and are there any corrections cases documented? 

It is obvious that USPS’s employees are in direct contact with potentially infected customers, and contaminated pachages, so I added the next question. 

Does the USPS consider providing counter and receiving employees facility with protecting mask and gloves?

And what extra measures are in place inside the receiving facilities, which handle boxes of different materials. 

She did not answer a single question I asked, but it provided me with CDC guidelines and information I have already found onn phanplets on the walls of the business location, and already widely distributed in the internet.

This is her copy paste lengthy response:

“Ms. Guzman,

The Postal Service is continuing to monitor the circumstances around the novel coronavirus, also known as “COVID-19.”  We are sharing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) guidance regarding the COVID-19 epidemic to our employees via stand up talks, employee news articles, messages on bulletin boards, and internal messaging inside USPS workplaces.

Currently, we are not experiencing operational impacts as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic and we are using this time to review/revise our contingency plans should they be needed.  Customers can view our most recent media statements and find a link to the CDC guidance at https://about.usps.com/newsroom/statements/usps-statement-on-coronavirus.htm

Regarding the importation of packages, the CDC states there is likely very low risk that the COVID-19 can be spread from products of packaging shipped from China, because of poor survivability of coronaviruses on surfaces.  Also, according to the CDC, there currently is no evidence to support transmission of coronavirus associated with imported goods; and there have been no reported cases of COVID-19 in the United States associated with imported goods.”

Sincerely,

Evelina Ramirez
USPS Corporate Communications
Media Relations

Ramirez avoided everyone of my questions. 

Transparency and honest response coming from official channels  is paramount to keep our communication safe in this COVID-19 pandemic scare. 

After reading the study published by the UCLA, it seems that shipping and handling letters and cardboard packages is a hazardous job, and yet Ramirez assured “there is no evidence to support transmission of coronavirus associated with imported good.”

There are two conclusions I made after receiving her response. Or either, the UCLA study was flawed, or the SARS-COV-2 wasn’t that contagious as the CDC, WHO, and Anthony Fauci said it was. If that was the case, postal workers would have been infected by the hundred of thousands, taking into consideration that they handled 1.2 billion of letters and packages.

All videos were shot by Marivel Guzman on March 13, 2020, at USPS Sunflower Business Center, Santa Ana, Cali

References:https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200320192755.htm

Evelina B Ramirez, evelina.b.ramirez@usps.gov

Interviews from postal worker, anonymous