This week rideshare drivers plan to meet with Uber and King County Health officials to hammer out a coronavirus safety plan. Full time drivers can easily carry 15 to 20 passengers a day. Many of their customers come straight from the airport. Drivers have a lot of questions about how to stay safe.

In late January, a couple of tourists in Rome tested positive for the coronavirus. They were the first confirmed cases in Italy. By late February, the outbreak there had grown to over 600 confirmed cases. On February 25, Derek Kaye, an Uber driver from Lake Stevens, Washington, picked up a passenger in Seattle. The passenger had come to visit Google and had just arrived from Milan, Italy. “And he started telling me about the corona virus fallout that was happening there around Milan," Kaye recalled. "Public gatherings were shutting down. And he was saying he was kind of glad to get out of there." "I remember him coughing into his hand in my car," Kaye said. "And I remember, after I dropped him off (he was my last rider), I took the leather wipes that I had in the car and wiped down the seats, and opened the window. But you know, I kept thinking about that rider as the news kept going on, and thinking that – he’d been right there." A few days later, the driver developed classic COVID-19 symptoms. He tried to get tested, but couldn’t. The illness spread to his two young kids, and he turned the back half of his house into a quarantine zone. While quarantined, Kaye learned about community transmission, and began to wonder: Was it the man from Italy, or another of his many customers who got him sick?

Kaye’s story illustrates a fear held by many Uber and Lyft drivers at this moment. The fear of getting sick, and getting others sick. Uber made some small changes, to try to help drivers, a spokesperson told KUOW. For example, drivers can decline a customer's ride request without consequence if they suspect that person might have the virus. Drivers are skeptical. “I wouldn’t say it’s an effective piece of guidance, because how would the driver be able to know who is infected?" asked Ahmed Mumin, a full time Uber driver and the director of the Seattle Rider Driver Association.

Credit: KUOW Photo/Joshua McNichols

Mumin said drivers need useful guidance on questions like:

Are there some places they should not pick up passengers?

Can a driver protect themselves by opening a window? How should drivers handle disputes between pool customers who suspect each other of having the virus and freak out? "Drivers aren't trained for that," Mumin said, but it's part of the job now. Are Uber and Lyft's carpool services safe?

Will Uber and Lyft protect drivers’ ratings if drivers need to do something, to protect public health, that would make a customer angry?

“Like, you’re picking up somebody from downtown, and he has a lot of luggage," Mumin said. "You’re taking them to the airport. The person wants help with their luggage. You don’t want to touch their luggage. How do you handle that?” Mumin said drivers who refuse to touch luggage for fear of contamination will likely get one star ratings. Enough of those can result in a driver getting deactivated, "which is a nice way of saying 'You're fired,'" Mumin said. Mumin also has concerns about drivers who may hide symptoms because they can't afford to stop working. He said 90% of his member drivers do not have health insurance and they certainly don't have paid sick days. Typhoid Mary on my mind: Coronavirus reveals thin safety net for gig workers Uber and Lyft have been taking guidance from public health authorities, and Mumin hopes bringing all stakeholders together at a table this week will help drivers ask specific questions that aren't answered by generic guidelines.

We ran some of these Mumin's questions by Dr. Guy Palmer, an expert on emerging infectious diseases at Washington State University. He said Uber and Lyft are probably safer than a bus, because the number of people coming in contact with each other is smaller. Opening a window probably won’t help, Palmer said, because the virus mostly spreads through contaminated surfaces. “It’s more likely that the one individual coughs onto something, the virus is encapsulated in a droplet, and then that’s touched by the other individual.” Palmer said drivers should use real sanitizing wipes, not a leather wipe like driver Derek Kaye had available, to wipe down things like door handles and seat belt buttons after each customer. “The back of the seat, the headrest... Just quick wipe-downs of those would reduce the chance of transmission,” Palmer added. If a driver must handle a customer’s luggage, wear gloves.