What Are We Doing To Meet Challenges Posed by COVID?
We are open!
For fully vaccinated individuals, no mask is required. We will be masked during treatment.
The situation is dynamic. Guidelines are subject to change.
In many ways, things haven’t changed that much. Compared to some of our colleagues, ranging from independent practitioners to chiropractors and “chain” locations, we have always had a higher bar. Cleanliness and sanitation have always been important in hands-on therapy. COVID just underscores the point.
We’ve always had a higher standard than most for everything from medical history and quality of treatment to the followup that goes along with it. Some offices and some practitioners may be less careful with their own health and yours. We take your health more seriously than that.
These are some of the things we are doing differently:
- Use of necessary PPE for therapists during treatment
- Open windows and fresh air whenever possible
- Installation of HEPA air cleaner/purifiers
- Greater spacing between sessions
- Thorough cleaning of all surfaces in the treatment room, restroom, and hallway area between each session
- Immediate removal from the treatment room and laundry of linens
To put it in a nutshell, we are engaging together in over an hour of close physical contact, breathing the same air with people who may be highly contagious and not know it.
You have never had an appointment with any doctor or ever had another medical procedure that creates similar exposure for either you or the practitioner.
This has always been true of manual therapy.
What is different now is that we know the factors that increase the spread of COVID are extended close contact, enclosed space, sharing the air in that space, and extended conversation or other forceful exhalations like coughing. These aerosol viral particles can hang in the air for hours without adequate filtration.
What Can You Do?
Crowded settings with large numbers of un-vaccinated people remain a risk. If you are in therapy, if in doubt, please mask up!
