The rise of fogging services during a pandemic

Despite the development of coronavirus vaccines that have proven efficacious in preventing serious illness, hospitalisation and death, the world is gripped by the economic and healthcare havoc COVID-19 continues to wreak. The third wave currently sweeping through South Africa, compounded by the delays in rolling out vaccinations, means that citizens’ lives are still hugely impacted.

This means that non-pharmaceutical interventions such as masking, ventilation, social distancing, hand hygiene, surface cleaning and disinfection will be with us well into 2022. It is not an understatement to say that sections of our population are being gripped by panic in the third wave. It is therefore not surprising that so many are looking to fog their facilities to ‘eliminate’ COVID-19 and assure the safety of occupants and visitors. Unfortunately, the ‘cleaning theatre’ of the fogging process merely gives them a false sense of security.

The public misconceptions regarding fogging date back to the start of the pandemic in 2020. Early laboratory tests indicated that the coronavirus could survive on surfaces for up to 6 days. The flaw in this research was that 10 million virus particles were placed on the test area. This would require at least one hundred COVID-19 positive people coughing and sneezing on the test area. This is unlikely to happen in real life!

Dr Emanuel Goldman 1 a microbiologist at New Jersey Medical School, published his landmark research ‘Exaggerated risk of transmission of COVID-19 by fomites’ 2 in The Lancet on 30 July 2020. Even prior to this publication there was increasing evidence that the dominant route of transmission of the virus is via aerosol droplets dispersed during talking, sneezing or coughing.

At the time, the CDC 3 and WHO 4 were under increasing pressure to recognise the aerosol transmission route. In an open letter 5 dated 6 July 2020, 239 scientists from 32 countries urged the WHO to finally acknowledge the overwhelming scientific evidence supporting aerosol transmission. In fairness, we have video evidence that within both the CDC and WHO the aerosol transmission debate was raging!

Ultimately, aerosol transmission gained due recognition. The CDC eventually unequivocally stated that there’s ‘less than a 1 in 10 000 chance of acquiring COVID-19 from a surface’ 6 . This fully vindicated Dr Goldman’s research.

The Professional Body for Environmental Hygiene 7 (PBEH) has monitored the pandemic since the very beginning. We were advising our industry associations, the National Contract Cleaners Association (NCCA) 8 and BEECA 9 Cleaning Association on cleaning and disinfecting best practices to reduce the transmission of the coronavirus. We were literally reviewing scores of documents each week, sifting through the inconsistent advice that was sometimes being communicated.

A key document we identified was the National Department of Health advisory 10 issued on 10 June 2020. The Department deserves enormous credit for the accuracy and relevance of this document. The key message from a cleaning and disinfection perspective was “The Department of Health does not endorse or require ‘deep cleaning’ that involves fumigation, demisting or fogging. Nor does the Department of Health require a so-called ‘certificate of cleaning’.” The information in the Department’s advisory is backed up by the CDC, EPA 11 and World Health Organization.

Despite the scientific evidence available that the coronavirus was unlikely to survive on surfaces longer than 24 hours, the Gauteng Department of Education decided to ‘deep clean and fog’ schools that were due to reopen from the middle of last year onwards. The fact that the schools had been closed for months made this ‘deep cleaning and fogging’ even more nonsensical.

Daily Maverick investigative journalist, Mark Heywood 12 , published an article on 26 January 2021 13 revealing that the Department had spent an eye watering R431m on deep cleaning and fogging. He also revealed that the Western Cape Department of Education had spent just R2.55m on deep cleaning in that province.

Mark immediately suspected grossly inflated charges by the ‘service providers’. Subsequent investigations by the SIU and Kirsten Pearson of Corruption Watch have resulted in the SIU freezing assets in excess of R60m. This fogging corruption scandal was further exposed by the investigative Carte Blanche television program on 27 June 2021. This is an ongoing investigation.

The toll that the coronavirus is taking on the South African society is manifest. So many South Africans are terrified that they risk losing vulnerable loved ones, given the delayed rollout of vaccinations. It is therefore easy for us to fall prey to the unethical and untrue promises so many of the fogging service providers continue to peddle.

It is imperative that we remind ourselves of the CDC’s advice that there’s ‘less than a 1 in 10,000 chance’ of acquiring the coronavirus from a surface. The only possible benefit of fogging is surface disinfection. The sometimes exorbitant charges for fogging cannot be justified. The CDC and WHO both emphasise that normal cleaning and disinfection of surfaces is adequate to reduce the risk of surface transmission.

The main takeaway from this article is that fogging does nothing to address aerosol transmission of the coronavirus!

Arthur Bath is Vice Chairman of theProfessional Body for Environmental Hygiene (PBEH). The Professional Body aims to provide recognition of competence to professionals in the cleaning industry.