COVID-19 has brought to the forefront the critical role that school nurses are uniquely able to care for communities. As the pandemic COVID-19 spreads, the school nurse was thrust into the center of the challenge. As the central health resource for their entire school communities, students, teachers, the staff, administrators, it has been a daunting task for an already largely unstaffed role. As such, the Back to Schools conference assembled school nurses in leadership positions from around the United States to provide insight. (see panel); The toll on kids. An estimated 45,000 children have lost one parent from COVID, many of these from socially economically disadvantaged. The toll has been extraordinary and the school nurse is often to witness how this as the…
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Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Aerosol Sense Sampler was announced this week (March 24th). It detects a variety of airborne pathogens, including the coronavirus. The Aerosol Sampler is about the size of a toaster oven. It sucks in ambient air and trapped airborne virus particles — if there were any to be found — into a specialized cartridge. Daily removal of the cartridge then delivered to laboratory for analysis. At $4,995, AerosolSense is reputed to be simpler and more accessible and will enable collection of air samples “by almost anyone” according to observers. One device can cover about 2000 sf. Experts field…
LOS ANGELES (March 16, 2021) – XPRIZE announced today the five winning teams in the $6M XPRIZE Rapid Covid Testing competition to create high-quality, affordable COVID-19 testing to help society safely reopen and return to everyday activities. Chosen by an independent panel of judges, the grand prize winning solutions are radically affordable compared to what is currently available on the market; and are comparable to commercial offerings at measuring sensitivity, specificity and limit of detection, with a maximum turnaround time of 12 hours from sample to result. The winning teams are: Reliable LFC, LLC, Antigen Testing, Carlsbad, United States ChromaCode,…
With many countries, such as England and Germany, choosing to re-impose stringent lockdowns amidst a third wave of coronavirus infections, the incentive for businesses to find alternative ways to continue operating is higher than ever. Given that mask-wearing and social distancing are less viable in winter temperatures, the question of indoor air purification presents itself as an enticing offer for businesses that typically rely on crowded indoor spaces, which carry a high risk for the spread of COVID-19 through aerosolization and direct contact. Many big manufacturers of air purifiers, such as Philips, Molekule and Dyson, have been capitalizing on this trend and marketing their…
Earlier this month, Kontrol Energy’s BioCloud technology received a two million dollar investment from the Ontario government. Kontrol, a Canadian energy company with international collaborators, was founded in 2015, and has made a name for itself through it’s use of technological innovation to address modern problems, such as energy efficiency, air quality and carbon emissions. Kontrol’s new BioCloud technology is a system designed to detect the ambient presence of COVID-19 in indoor air, and marks the company’s first shift to pandemic era solutions. While coronavirus air testing has recently experienced a technological boom, with companies such as eurofins, AssuredBio, and PathogenDx offering their own air testing technologies, the BioCloud system stands out as the sole…
NEW YORK | October 14, 2020 –A new report by the Duke-Margolis Center provides the first application of a detailed framework to provide guidance on how best to screen for, and stop or reduce the spread of, Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2) in schools. The report, Risk Assessment and Testing Considerations for Reducing SARS-CoV-2 Transmission in K-12 Schools, is the first-of-its-kind to offer a risk assessment and testing guidance that can be adapted to reflect the risk of Covid-19 in a school’s community. It also considers the benefits of transmission reduction alongside the costs of testing and of managing “false positive” results. As…
Fluidigm COVID-19 Campus Safeguard Program Improves Availability of Noninvasive, Saliva-Based SARS-CoV-2 Tests for Higher Education Institutions. SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Oct. 08, Fluidigm Corporation (Nasdaq:FLDM), announced a program to expand availability of Fluidigm® COVID-19 tests for U.S. colleges and universities. The Fluidigm COVID-19 Campus Safeguard Program will provide millions of noninvasive, saliva-based tests for the SARS-CoV-2 virus to qualifying institutions at a cost as low as $5 per test. The Advanta™ Dx SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR Assay on the high-throughput Fluidigm Biomark™ HD system features an integrated testing platform and a reliable supply chain and can be easily combined with commonly available…
Singapore has developed an event testing approach to make possible large events, weddings, and conferences. The pilot program will run from late October until December will utilize antigen rapid tests (ARTs) for the pre-event testing, which can return “fairly accurate” results within about half an hour, according to the Ministry of Health (MOH). The ART results will be valid for 24 hours from the time of the swab, and it must be valid at the point of entry until the end of the event, said MOH in a technical briefing on the matter. According to MOH officials: “If you go…