Astral Hygiene Blog | Commercial Cleaning & Hygiene Advice UK

 Infection Prevention and Control: Care Home case study  14th March 2025 | Environmental Health, Hygiene, Cleaning Tips Infection Prevention and Control: Care Home case study Today, I'd like to discuss the Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) guidance for care homes (released by NHS Scotland and the Care Inspectorate), specifically those caring for elderly patients with dementia. I've reviewed the latest IPC and Care Inspectorate documentation to ensure that my advice aligns with current standards. Having worked with several care homes over the last few years, I have been heavily involved in implementing cleaning guidance, and also attending meetings with the NHS Care Home Assurance Team to give me clear insight into what the standards are and what I need to do as a supplier to make it enhance my understanding so I can help my clients to achieve and attain the standard set out in these guidelines. **Hand Hygiene** Hand hygiene remains crucial in reducing infection transmissi...

  Monkeypox Virus  2nd June 2022  | By Anna Armstrong   |  Cleaning Tips ,  Environmental Health ,  Hygiene ,  Sustainability ,  Coronovirus Transmission Transmission Spread of Monkeypox may occur when a person comes into close contact with an infected human or animal, or materials contaminated with the virus. Monkeypox has not been detected in animals in the UK. The virus can enter the body through broken skin, the respiratory tract, or the mucous membranes (eyes, nose, or mouth). Person-to-person spread is uncommon, but may occur through: direct contact with Monkeypox skin lesions or scabs coughing or sneezing of an individual with a Monkeypox rash contact with clothing or linens (such as bedding or towels) used by an infected person The risk of transmission can be substantially reduced by cleaning and disinfection, or by washing clothes or domestic equipment with standard detergents and cleaning products. In the home transmission can be re...

  Cleaning and disinfecting after a COVID outbreak in your school  12th November 2021  | By Anna Armstrong Government and parents are both advocating for in-person learning   this school year,   keeping schools open and safe for students and staff is a top priority. Unfortunately, no matter how good your school's infection prevention strategy and how many mitigation layers it contains, COVID 19 outbreaks and school closures are on the rise, with schools across the country temporarily shutting down as infection rates soar in their classrooms and communities. Factors outside of your control – the increased transmission of the Delta variant, low vaccination rates in some areas, and lack of universal masking in many school and community settings have sent tens of thousands of students and staff members across our country into isolation and quarantine just as the new school year started.     While you can't control many of these, fortunately, your faci...

  Are you ready for Hygiene 2.0?  21st April 2021  | By Anna Armstrong   |  Coronovirus ,  Hygiene The virus that effectively shut down the world in 100 days, has taught us a great deal about Hygiene, and particularly how to manage it The virus that effectively shut down the world in 100 days, has taught us a great deal about Hygiene, and particularly how to manage it. It has also taught us that we need a new strategy, to manage the effects of any future pandemics or breakouts, to slow the spread down without having to shut everything down. Businesses, individuals; everyone has been through such a difficult and harrowing time over the last 12 months…. so now is the time to devise a plan to counter the effects of new virus outbreaks to allow us to manage it whilst still allowing businesses to function. In 2007, statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb defined “Black Swan” as an event that “is an outlier,” as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations. Black...

  Is your hand sanitiser strong enough?  5th March 2020  | By Anna Armstrong   |  Coronovirus Over the last week, we have seen cases of Coronovirus (COVD-19) in the UK, and this has sent what feels like the whole population in to a mass panic. Here at Astral we have been absolutely inundated with calls and orders for hand sanitisers as the population believes this will help them to not contract the virus What I want to do in this weeks’ blog is to dial it back a bit, strip it back to the basics and to point out some things that everyone needs to be aware of. Over the last week, we have seen cases of Coronovirus (COVD-19) in the UK, and this has sent what feels like the whole population in to a mass panic. Here at Astral we have been absolutely inundated with calls and orders for hand sanitisers as the population believes this will help them to not contract the virus. Wash your hands…… yes I’m sorry, I’m very aware that I am continually harping on about this but ...

  COVID 19 - Myth Busters......  10th June 2020  | By Anna Armstrong   |  Coronovirus Over the last few weeks I have heard some really alarming things that people are saying about prevention and cure of the novel COVID 19. We are over the worst, thank fully; and our economy and our people are reeling from one of the worst things that most of us have seen in our life time. I remain concerned, that people are saying these incorrect statements, so I thought I’d blog about it! The first myth I’ve heard is that if you drink a lot of alcohol, it protects you against COVID 19.  This is absolutely not true, and actually drinking alcohol distracts your immune system by trying to get what is effectively poison out of your body, and actually increases the risk of health problems.  Yes, I do know that a lot of hand gels are alcohol based, but it is categorically impossible to sterilise yourself from the inside out, and drinking alcohol is harmful, particularly in ...

  Bird Flu - Epidemiology and Prevention  13th February 2020  | By Anna Armstrong   |  Hygiene Bird Flu has recently been brought back up in the UK media, so it is useful to share some information about the epidemiology of the virus, how to contain it, chemicals to use and share some common sense information on prevention of the spread if you are unfortunate enough to get it in your flock. The virus spreads through infected birds shedding the virus in their saliva, nasal secretions and droppings.  Healthy birds get infected when they come into contact with contaminated secretions of feces from infected birds.  In very rare cases it can affect humans, however there are many strains of bird flu virus and most of them will not infect the human population.  In recent years there are four strains that have caused concern in the human population: H5N1 (since 1997) H7N9 (since 2013) H5N6 (since 2014) H5N8 (since 2016) Although these four strains don’t af...

  Deciphering the detail - what do I actually need to ready my premises to open again?  23rd June 2020  | By Anna Armstrong   |  Environmental Health ,  Coronovirus An easy to understand sign posted guide to what you actually need to open your hotel, bar, restaurant, self catering property again..... There have been a lot of protocol documents and guidance documents thrust under my nose recently by the accounts/customers that I personally manage. A lot of the language within these documents is overly complex, sometimes contradictory, I’m just a bit too much for anybody to digest. I currently have open on my desktop ‘Cleaning protocols for self catering properties and short-term let in the context of COVID-19‘; This document is 20 pages long, and is trying to distinguish the difference between cleaning and disinfecting, it gives a lot of European Standard numbers but fails to explain what is European standard numbers actually mean to the man on the street. I...