ITHACA, N.Y. (WENY) - As New York state continues to reopen, experts are urging people in the state to take proper safety precautions. WENY News spoke with Nellie Brown, who is the Director of the Workplace Health and Safety program with Cornell University.

She says she follows the hierarchy of controls. When doing so, she starts at the top and looks at ways to eliminate the virus from coming into the workplace. Brown says if business owners need to think seriously about inspecting a building if it has been closed. She says to look for signs of problems such as leaks or critter infestations.

When it comes to the safety of reopening, Brown has questions for business owners. The questions are “can people still work from home? Are you going to screen anybody? Are you going to run any test on anyone?”

Although businesses are opening and more people are going back to work, Brown has a suggestion. She says business owners should consider still having employees work remotely.

Then she drops further down the hierarchy of controls to the engineering controls. She says “I suggest that you put up a plastic barrier to diffuse some of that air you cause don't want the air blowing across from one person to another.”

As we move further down the hierarchy, we rely on the public for their efforts. “People just kind of decide they are going to go back to the way life as before and we can't do that yet because social distancing is really needed,” Brown shared with our reporter.

Brown says over the years, she has had a difficult time trying to get businesses and people to plan for a crisis and consider what could go wrong. She says “people just don't want to think about the unthinkable. They have the opinion that when the issue happens then we will do it.” However, that doesn't stop her from trying to increase people's awareness on the importance of crisis planning. She says she tries to get people to think about the possibility of staff not being able to return to work right away. Some reasons why this may be is if they are sick, quarantining or being care givers.

These suggestions do not apply to COVID-19 only. Brown expresses “you want to prevent other diseases too.”