Ensuring that those research or transfer projects that cannot be postponed and require work in the laboratories can continue to be developed is the objective of the access protocol to these facilities established by the University. The measure establishes that access must be carried out in shifts, with a single person in each unit and aims to avoid “a total stoppage in research”, as highlighted by the vice-chancellor Belén Rubio.
“We have been confined for more than 40 days and the research staff needs to continue with their projects and contracts with companies,” emphasizes the vice-rector for Research, who acknowledges that access to the laboratories is already a demand that the research staff was making “on a timely and individual basis”, also taking into account that many “experimental works represent continuous series, some of them of many years” for which a stop would imply losing “a lot of relevant information”. Through this protocol, access can be carried out in an “organized manner”, in shifts of a maximum of four hours, which allow for “adequate cleaning and disinfection” between them, and with a single person per unit, such that “the risk of contagion is minimal or nil”, points out Rubio.
Access to laboratories and offices
Aimed at guaranteeing the safety and health of people who come to work in the University’s spaces during the state of alarm, it is the subject of a protocol that establishes the access request procedure that, weekly, the principal researcher of the project must transfer to the deaneries and managements of their centers, who in turn will forward them to the Vice-Rectorate for Research. This same procedure, in this case forwarded to the Vice-Rectorate for Academic Planning and Teaching Staff, will also be applied to teachers with difficulties in connecting to the internet who must access their offices on a timely basis to guarantee adequate non-face-to-face teaching. In both cases, the permits must take into account the establishment of two shifts of a maximum of four hours, which could imply, Rubio acknowledges, “that in those centers that demand a lot of assistance there will be researchers who cannot access every day.”
Gradual reincorporation after the state of alarm
The protocol “will be reviewed and expanded once the state of alarm is over, with a progressive reinstatement planned and trying to maintain teleworking as much as possible, at least for two months”, following the recommendations established by the Government. “What is clear is that we will not all be able to return to the laboratories at once”, acknowledges Rubio, who sees this measure as a “first step towards de-escalation, which will be gradual and progressive”.
Source: DUVI
