12th Workshop on Accelerator Operations

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was formally characterized as a pandemic on March 11, 2020. On March 25th first lockdown in Poland was introduced. SOLARIS facility operation for users was cancelled until May 30th, 2020 at that time. The facility had to adjust to the new reality. Wearing masks, disinfection and social distance has become obligatory. To continue the work in those difficult times required to switch to the hybrid mode. During lockdown only minimal staff was kept at the facility to maintain the services. The most of the team was working remotely from home. All meeting has been organised via MS TEAMS and ZOOM platforms. In the control room the number of people has been limited to 3 persons at the time. Moreover the number of operators on a shift has been finally reduced to 1 person. In order to support the operation during lockdown the remote access to the control room and to the machine network was deployed as well as new tool to support the remote injection has been developed and implemented. Since the control room is a common area for many operators and subsystem’s owners it became obligatory to work there in masks and disposable gloves. Moreover each user after finishing his work has had to disinfect keyboards, mice and desks. Regarding the users – also the remote access and experiments has been implemented, however the external users also were accepted at the facility but limited to max. 2 people per beamline. In 2020 due to the COVID19 pandemic, the beamtime was reduced by 5% in total, whereas in 2021 the total beamtime was not affected by the pandemic. During the presentation more details about the first reaction and running the accelerator during COVID-19 pandemic to be discussed.