Coronavirus & Drinking Water Dispensers
As with existing common cold/coronaviruses, there’s no evidence that COVID-19 can survive in drinking (or waste) waters. This means that, like with a common cold, a coronavirus is not known to infect mains water, transmit through an incoming water supply and, therefore, to infect the water system inside a drinking water dispenser.
The known sources of transmission and infection are through respiratory (breathing in) and contact (touching) with the virus. Of these, the only risk to users is the external contact surfaces of the dispenser, especially the controls, following contamination by a user infected with COVID-19. Therefore, these external surfaces carry the same risk as any other surface in the working environment.
The importance of daily external sanitisation of water dispensers
As with the common cold, the technical structure of the COVID-19 virus means it’s fragile and susceptible to effective inactivation treatment by disinfectant chemicals. It’s therefore important to continue with daily external cleaning of all contact surfaces using a proprietary disinfectant cleaner and scheduled routine internal sanitisation.
If either of these are not already in place, they should be implemented immediately. Also, it would be prudent to consider, on an individual basis, increasing the frequency of any daily external cleaning regime to reflect the usage and risk.
Overall, it is most important to always keep the external surfaces clean, especially the contact points.
If you’d like further information, please contact your account manager.
