Biosafety is a discipline that is most often applied to work in the laboratory or to research-related activities. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic ramped up, organizations started to understand their risks in the workplace outside the laboratory and the applicability of biosafety became apparent. It was at this point that they called our team at MRIGlobal to assist in four main areas:
First was the interpretation of the recommendations and requirements issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the World Health Organization (WHO), and other public health authorities. A critical part of our daily work was and is staying abreast of such topics;
Second was to help perform a risk identification and analysis of various workspaces, ranging from individual rooms and floors to multi-building complexes;
We were then asked to help prioritize and plan risk responses, and in some cases provide on-call support to clients when incidents did occur; and,
Finally, we were frequently asked to help plan how our clients communicated key information about internal pandemic-related policies and procedures to their staff, which in some cases included us developing and providing training for staff members that was tailored to specific sites and activities.
What We Saw in the Workplace As we worked with clients, we identified early on that many of them shared several challenges to an effective pandemic response. First was the state of their existing pandemic or communicable disease-related preparedness plans. Many had no provision at all for disruptions due to communicable diseases in these plans. Existing plans were primarily focused on isolated cases of influenza and did not address large scale disruption of operations due to widespread illness within the local, let alone global, community. The organizations were essentially having to develop their playbook mid-game. Read more about considerations for ensuring biosafety and laboratory operations during such a challenging event in “Laboratory Planning and Preparedness to Mitigate Risk.”
Further, a lack of clearly defined roles and responsibilities related to making rapid decisions in response to the emerging public health crisis was a common challenge. This lack of clear ownership of the response slowed the development, approval, and implementation of their response plans. Relatedly, there was a general reluctance by many of the organizations to define their own tolerance for risk related to potential transmission of the virus in the workplace. This led to prolonged debates about when and how on-site operations could resume, in some cases delaying the actual development and introduction of back-to-office initiatives.
Many of the organizations also began the pandemic without concrete, validated strategies for sharing critical information with their employees during non-routine operations. Early on, this led to employees receiving conflicting information from multiple sources, reducing confidence in their leadership’s ability to manage the situation effectively and safely.
Finally, the contracts that organizations had with the vendors and contractors that supported facility operations were often not written in a way that easily allowed the organizations to enforce new PPE requirements or administrative controls that were adopted.
And though the pandemic offers key learnings that operations can implement in their preparedness for the future, there are other diseases, natural disasters, and otherwise disruptive challenges that may impact your operational continuity. Read more about potential disruptions that could impact your business in “Looming Challenges to Continuity.”
Don’t let these and other potential disruptions to business continuity undermine laboratory safety. Organizational leadership must understand the risks associated not only with these disruptions, but also with being unprepared to mitigate their impact in the laboratory and across the workplace.
GETTING STARTED AT MRIGLOBAL Contact MRIGlobal for further information about our work in biosafety preparedness. With more than 100 years of combined experience in clinical and research laboratories at all containment levels and in more than a dozen countries, our team can support the start-up of your biosafety program, facility audit and inspection, security and biorisk assessment, and staff training.
To discuss how we can help your project be successful, contact us today.
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