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The momentum is clearly in favor of opening the country back up, which means that a lot of us will have a decision to make: Do we go back to the office? How can we tell if our company has taken measures sufficient to keep us safe?

Tacoma MD Dr. Gordon Cohen joined Seattle’s Morning News to discuss.

“I think it’s complicated. I think that as individuals, we still need to do the things that we have been trying to do for the past few months … avoid touching frequently used items or services. But if we do, we need to absolutely wash your hands or use hand sanitizer,” he said.

This also means wiping down shared items like keyboards and desks several times a day, even if it makes you look fussy.

“I think you can never be too safe, is the bottom line. I think you wipe down the keyboards. I think you do wash your hands every chance you get. I think you really have to be cognizant about not touching your face,” Cohen said. “And I really think that wearing masks is just a simple thing for us to do, but it only really works if everybody’s doing it.”

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“There’s a that was released this past week in Washington state that for all the testing they have done so far, only 6.8% of people have tested positive as having been exposed to the disease. That means that basically 93% of the state of Washington hasn’t been exposed to the virus. So that still leaves a tremendous amount of room for people to get sick.”

If you work outdoors and there’s obviously air circulation happening, do you need to wear a mask?

“It depends on what the circumstances is, how close you come to others. I do believe that that there’s a difference between being outdoors with good air movement versus being indoors with more stagnant air movement,” he said.

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“It’s still useful to wear a mask because you’re coming in contact with other people. You just can’t be too careful.”

That said, Cohen warned that it’s the shared surfaces that may provide the biggest threat.

“The most likely place you’re going to get infected is really from a surface,” he said. “How often over the course of your entire life, if you think about it, have you ever really had somebody directly sneeze in your face or directly cough in your face?”

“What’s more likely is something like a keyboard that somebody who’s infected sneezes on or near, or on their hands and then touches a keyboard. And then you use the keyboard and you bring your hands to your face and you infect yourself that way.”

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.