SAFE SPACE?
Elevators almost risk-free if folks follow rules, public health experts say
As workers are expected to return to office buildings in coming weeks, the whoosh of opening elevators may herald an uncomfortable reunion: Welcome back to sharing tight spaces with strangers.
Even before the coronavirus pandemic, special etiquette ruled the elevator’s awkward confines: Face forward, hold the door for stragglers, chatterboxes unwelcome. Health agencies and medical experts are now urging elevator riders to follow additional rules: Wear masks, tap buttons with an object or knuckle and avoid speaking when possible.
If riders follow those recommendations, “there’s essentially no risk in an elevator,” said infectious disease physician Colleen Kraft, the associate chief medical officer at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.
“It is a short period of time,” she said. “If you are wearing a mask and others are masked in the elevator, I don’t think it poses any risk.”
Joseph Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said it is understandable that elevators may cause anxiety. “It’s a natural choke-point in the building,” he said. “We’ve been told to keep six feet away from others.”
Intensity, frequency and duration are three factors that determine exposure to a hazard, Allen said. For most office workers, the frequency of elevator rides is low — perhaps a round-trip or two on a workday. And at a minute or less for most trips, the duration is short.
Occupancy restrictions and no-talking rules aim to reduce intensity by limiting the amount of virus released as droplets or aerosols. The elevator is a “place where risk can be managed quite effectively,” Allen said. Masks and face coverings, too, are essential.
New York plans to permit office workers to return to their buildings soon, Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters. Coronavirus cases continue to decline there, unlike swaths of the south and southwest, where cases have risen.
De Blasio estimated that 300,000 people will return to work in his city shortly.
Limited research exists to describe elevators during pandemics past or present. When Lee Gray, an architectural history professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who wrote a historical account of 19th-century elevators, hunted for examples from the 1918 influenza pandemic, he found little except for photographs that show that elevator operators wearing masks.
While people should be careful when touching surfaces they haven’t cleaned, Kraft advised against wearing gloves. It’s too easy to misuse them or be lulled into a false sense of security, she said. Instead, use a toothpick, a corner of shirt fabric or another barrier to touch buttons. Some companies are trying to make this easier — Isla Bella Beach Resort, a luxury hotel in Florida, started handing out branded, rubber-tipped styluses for guests to press elevator buttons.
There is no easy way to avoid using elevators in a tall building. Asking employees to walk in stairwells may be a fire hazard or physically onerous. To remain physically distanced, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend maintaining six-foot separations, even while in an elevator. To Allen, that’s not practical and may have a negative unintended effect.
“That really means that they’re saying one person per elevator ride,” he said. “In some of these big buildings, if we have one person ride an elevator, we are going to have hundreds, if not thousands of people in the lobby. And that creates a greater exposure.” Instead, Allen suggested people file into the elevator in a checkerboard pattern to stay somewhat separated.
“Everyone has a role to play here,” Allen said. “If everyone does their part, we can reduce risk collectively.”