For the past three weeks, deputies have controlled three robots to disinfect surfaces with ultraviolet light after staff manually clean areas such as jail cells.
The Surfacide UV-C Robots are part of the department’s safety measures for inmates and staff, Sheriff Jeff Dirkse said, alongside providing personal protective equipment, suspending programs such as GED classes and keeping people booked on the same day together for at least 14 days instead of housing them with others.
“There’s been no spread (of COVID-19) within the facility so I think they have certainly been an effective tool,” Dirkse said Wednesday.
The department spent about $100,000 on the equipment, Dirkse said, and aims to defray the costs with federal funding from the CARES Act. Keckler Medical Company in Oakdale sold the robots to the Sheriff’s Department at the same price it charges medical facilities, said Brett Manning, the supplier’s sales development manager.
In the past few months, Manning said officials at Sutter Health hospitals in Los Banos, Tracy and Sacramento, the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center and an Alameda County Jail bought the same models to reduce transmission of COVID-19. Modesto hotels and dentists have also sent inquiries about the robots, said Rick Gray, a sales consultant at Keckler.
The robots have been on the market for six years and were primarily used by hospital staff before the pandemic, said Surfacide Regional Sales Director Todd Veenhuise, but interest has exploded.
How is the Sheriff’s Department disinfecting with the robots?
Currently, sheriff’s deputies exclusively disinfect jail facilities with the robots, Dirkse said, but plan to bring them to places such as department offices as needed. Deputies can operate the three robots together to cover large rooms, Veenhuise said, or run them separately in smaller jail cells.The robots emit ultraviolet-C energy, a type of ultraviolet light generated by the sun that does not penetrate earth’s atmosphere, Veenhuise said. The energy is germicidal, meaning it can kill microorganisms such as viruses and bacteria.
“It goes into all the nooks and crannies around the room and delivers UVC energy which breaks down the DNA of the bacteria and destroys it, making it incapable of reproducing again,” Veenhuise said.
As of Wednesday, Dirkse said the onlyCOVID-19 case at the detention centers involved probation arresting and booking a man who was released from a Chino prison after testing positive for the virus. The man violated the terms of his quarantine, Dirkse said, and deputies brought him through a separate entrance to a negative pressure room.
What safety features do the robots have?
UVC energy is harmful to humans and carcinogenic, so the robots at the detention center include an auto-shutoff feature. Motion sensors installed in the robots ensure people are not exposed to dangerous wavelengths, Veenhuise said.To access the software and start the system, a user name and password must be entered on a tablet. Surfacide and Keckler Medical Company staff trained and defined select deputies at the detention center as operators, he added.
“It would be highly, highly unlikely that anybody who shouldn’t get the system in their hands would actually be able to get in and operate it,” Veenhuise said.
©2020 The Modesto Bee (Modesto, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
