A PROTOCOL is needed to ensure that home delivery fleets do not place drivers or the public at additional risk from coronavirus, said management specialist FleetCheck.
These fleets could serve an essential role in the next few months by ensuring that people who are self-isolating can easily access food and other essentials, but there is a possibility that drivers could be exposing themselves to risk as well as personally spreading the virus.
Peter Golding, managing director at FleetCheck, said: ‘This is an area where we need to establish some sensible ground rules very quickly. Home delivery fleets have a potentially crucial role to play, but could also become a problem in themselves.
‘At the most basic level, the act of signing for delivery with your fingertip on a screen should stop right now. I’m no epidemiologist but if someone is self-isolating, you don’t want them placing a finger on a widely shared surface, however often it is cleaned.’
Peter said that the problem appeared to fall into two areas, how to protect drivers from potentially infected customers and vice versa, and how to prevent drivers who were unknowingly infected from spreading the virus delivery by delivery.
Peter added that drivers who were on the road for most of the day could also find it difficult to undertake basic hygiene measures. ‘It would be best if a single protocol could be created either by the government or one adopted on a voluntary basis by the home delivery sector. However, whatever happens needs to happen quickly.’
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