As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, provinces across Canada are in the process of slowly starting to reopen businesses and services. While it will likely be a substantial period of time until everything is back to normal, there will be a time within the next several months to a year where large-scale gatherings and events are once again able to take place. However, it will be important for event organizers – no matter the size of the event – to take proper precautions to ensure the safety of event attendees, workers and volunteers.
About COVID-19 screeners
At RPI, we’ve received many requests in recent weeks from various businesses, as well as healthcare organizations and clinics, for COVID-19 screeners. In most cases, these screeners are fully-trained registered practical nurses (RPNs) who will do a quick check-up of anyone who enters the business – be it an employee or a customer – with an infrared, no-contact thermometer, as well as ask a series of brief questions about potential symptoms. While this procedure isn’t 100% accurate, it provides a degree of peace-of-mind to anyone entering or working at the business, and ensures that the owner of the establishment has the best interests of everyone in mind.
Hiring a screener for your event
Once provinces give the green light for events to resume, we strongly recommend that all event organizers – whether you’re hosting a smaller gathering of 100+ people, or putting on a large-scale event that attracts thousands such as Toronto’s Festival of Beer – consider hiring COVID-19 screeners for all of your event’s points-of-entry. While we understand that not every single attendee is going to agree with being screened, we truly believe that the majority of people will be happy to know that precautions are being taken for their safety.
Say your event is opening its doors at 9am on a Saturday. Your best course of action would be to hire screeners who will arrive at the venue or event site 1-2 hours prior to the open time, giving them the opportunity to screen any employees, volunteers, or vendors who will arrive early. Once the doors to your event are open, a screener should be stationed at every entrance in order to make sure that anyone coming in can be screened. See below for a chart that illustrates how many screeners we recommend that you hire:
| Number of Entrances to your Event | Suggested Number of Hired RPNs |
| 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 1-2 |
| 3 | 2-3 |
| 4+ | 4-5+ |
Of course, depending on the size of your event, it’s entirely possible that you’ll want to hire more than one screener per entrance so as to not hold up lines any more than necessary.
It’s important to note that, while we do suggest hiring RPNs as screeners during the first phase of businesses and events reopening, any screeners hired for subsequent phases don’t necessarily have to have a background in healthcare. However, during the initial reopening, it’s important that your screeners are healthcare workers who have a clear understanding of potential symptoms and/or other red flags.
In closing
If you have a future event in the pipeline that you think would benefit from having COVID-19 screeners on-site, contact RPI’s Account Managers today. They’re standing by and ready to help you ensure that your event, and everyone involved, run smoothly and safely!
Phone: 416-850-9809; Toll-Free: 1-866-505-3383
Email: info@rpigroup.ca
