Imagine you are in charge of an apartment building with 330 residents, and the virus is here.

[Midnight Writer]

You can test one person, and only one person, each day.

That is the information you get to stop the spread and save the health of the tenants.

That is the equivalent of testing 1 million people a day in a country of 330 million.

And as a country, we are not even doing that.

And our President says we are doing too much testing.

[Worried2020]

1. I wouldn't be surprised to see apartment buildings to go the way of long care facilities.

I know they rarely are in contact with most of the people, but everyone is using the same door handles, elevator buttons, hand rails etc., - besides the occasions when more than one person/family is using an elevator at a time.

I fear that those of us that rush back to restore the "normal" they were used to - will end up accelerating the proliferation of this bug.

No cure, no vaccine - we should learn from the East Asians - they started with the masks way back in January.

Our performance in North America is pretty careless,

We can expect it to get much worse

unless we change our ways.

W

[Yavin4]

2. I live in apartment bldg.

I wear goggles, a mask, and rubber gloves whenever I go out. When I come home, I wash the gloves in lysol before I take them off. Then I wash my hands.

[smirkymonkey]

3. I also live in an apartment building.

Everyone wears masks, socially distances, most people wear gloves or bring disinfectant wipes with them to touch buttons and door handles. Delivery people have to drop things off at a front table in the lobby. We have custodians who spend the day cleaning and disinfecting common areas. There are signs everywhere to tell people to stand back behind the line in front of elevators and only one person in an elevator at a time.

People here have been amazingly cooperative (Boston) and nobody in this building has gotten sick yet (I asked the concierge). We aren't a huge building, only 7 floors, but fairly spread out, so maybe around 225 - 230 apartments and the building is spotless. Even the basement is immaculate. A lot of us also have balconies so we can get fresh air in our units, which is nice. I love living here. It's so much more convenient that having to take care of your own home.

[uponit7771]

4. K&R, its too late for low population sentinel testing now. The fire has spread too far to test low %

... of population when we can't tell who's on fire.

We have to have a large amount tested weekly now and the number who needs to be tested goes up weekly.

[Nature Man]

5. I though you were talking about an actual apartment building

then I started thinking about HVAC.

But, yes, what you said, definitely.

[mnhtnbb]

6. I live on the 17th floor of a 23 story apartment building

in downtown Raleigh. I have to ride the elevator to take my dog out several times a day. Management has limited occupancy of elevators to 2 people or one household. Since March I haven't been in an elevator with anyone who has coughed or sneezed and most of the time people don't interact like we used to. Still, I feel like I'm playing Russian roulette every time I ride the elevator and believe it is the place where I'm at most risk.

Hand sanitizer dispensers have been installed in our elevators and outside the elevator bank at the lobby level. We see employees constantly cleaning surfaces.

HVAC is unit specific, but of course the common areas where people come and go are served by a central unit.