Kristen Gyles | Moving on from COVID-19

Over the past few weeks, I had the occasion of visiting two hospitals in Kingston which still allow no more than one visitor at a time, to each patient. One of the two institutions actually allows no more than one visitor per patient, per day. What that means is that as a patient, if you have a visitor in the morning during visiting hours, hope no one else comes to see you in the afternoon, because all they will get to see is all the other visitors huddled outside, who were also denied entry.

Why? Why would it be necessary to limit patients so stringently from seeing their relatives and friends, some of whom carry supplies to them daily? What good does that do? After inquiring, the response I got from one nurse was the usual cop-out – “COVID”.

It is clear many institutions have not reviewed or in any way revisited their COVID-19 policies since they were created, probably shortly after the arrival of ‘Patient Zero’ almost four years ago. Since the onset of the pandemic when many boards and management teams sat down together for several hours, hashing out and fine-tuning the best work-from-home policies and COVID-19 containment protocol, it doesn’t seem there has been any follow-up. Maybe, just maybe, now is the time.

Yes, there are still COVID-19 cases. There will always be. But we are no longer under the scourge of the pandemic. Even by the standards of the World Health Organization (WHO), the COVID-19 virus is no longer a global public health emergency and has not been since May of last year. The circumstances which necessitated many of the now-outdated COVID-19 protocol have passed.

REVISITED

There are other COVID-19 containment measures that one would reasonably think would have been revisited by now, by corporate and other business entities. While most places of business have dropped the mask-wearing requirement, there are still a few exceptional ones that are adamant that a face-mask is required for entry.

The average person is not averse to wearing a mask, especially when it’s only for the few minutes that will be spent inside a particular building. However, realistically speaking, the average person is no longer walking around with a mask. If it is so critical that each entrant put on a mask, providing medical masks at the door might make sense.

Besides the few entities that are clearly still very intentional about maintaining the outdated COVID-19 protocol, it seems we just haven’t taken the time to re-evaluate many of the requirements that originated during the beginning of the pandemic. It’s why we are still having Zoom and Microsoft Teams meetings at our desks at work, even though everyone is physically present in the building, and it’s why some security guards still need your name upon arrival to put into the ‘contact tracing’ book.

For some reason some businesses seem hesitant to remove the many “no mask, no entry” posters and the social distance stickers from off the floors, but if these instructions will not be enforced there is no point in having them displayed.

WHY HAVE THEM?

It may just be me, but when I enter a place of business that has stickers on the floor telling me where to stand, I stand precisely where instructed. Nonetheless, the person standing behind me sometimes spends their time in the line sniffing my neck back, because the furthest thing from their mind is the issue of keeping distance. Those in charge of enforcing the rules do not enforce the social distancing requirements. So why have them?

COVID-19 was a convenient excuse for quite some time, for students who didn’t do their homework, employees who didn’t meet their agreed targets, and entities that failed organisational objectives. If the pandemic raged on for any longer, maybe it would have also become the reason there is ongoing war in Gaza and the cause for world hunger. But it’s just not a viable excuse any more for why we are observing measures that no longer address current needs. By now, basic post-pandemic adjustments should have been made in acceptance of the fact that our circumstances have changed and the pandemic is, for all practical purposes, a thing of the past.

And to be clear, making post-COVID-19 adjustments to organisational policies doesn’t mean doing away with everything we learnt from the pandemic. Hopefully, we have emerged from the pandemic as more efficient and more health-conscious people and entities. Places of business might still want to offer hand-rubbing alcohol or sanitiser to their customers, or simply keep the sanitiser dispenser filled up instead of having the empty dispenser sit uselessly on the wall. They might also still ask for social distancing and might still have flexible work-from-home arrangements – but not because we did it for three years and are too lazy to evaluate whether we still need to be doing it, but because it actually makes sense.

Kristen Gyles is a free-thinking public affairs opinionator. Send feedback to kristengyles@gmail.com