The pressure on the transportation industry during the pandemic has shifted from moving citizens to keeping a core transportation system operational with a skeleton workforce to ensure freight and key essential workers can continue to move.
A secondary effect of this shift is the sudden change in sources of revenue for transportation operators, with many experiencing an unexpected shortfall in their finances. The industry has followed all safety measures outlined by governments and authorities, including sanitation, social distancing, mask-wearing, and testing. However, the industry needs more support to cope with new pressures on supply in the spring of 2021.
U.S. companies ranging from Colgate-Palmolive Co. to Boot Barn Holdings Inc. -- and others across Europe and Asia -- have highlighted the supply strains in recent days. The Federal Maritime Commission launched an inquiry late last year into port congestion, but bottlenecks persist heading into the seasonal peak before Chinese New Year in mid-February.
“Our freight costs will probably be a pressure point for us over the next, I don't know, three months or six months,” Greg Hackman, chief operating officer at California-based Boot Barn, said last week, citing port pileups that are affecting inventories.
Stephen Bartlett, chairman of the Association of Freight Software Suppliers, warned that the disruption may be about to escalate.
“There could be more disruption as trucks come through that aren't prepared with paperwork or drivers who haven’t been tested for COVID-19. There will be more issues,” he said.
Regular rapid mass testing will help facilitate a more significant opening of other large industries such as infrastructure engineering, rail travel, entertainment, hospitality, manufacturing, and retail, among many more. By testing staff regularly in industry with rapid results, consumers and employees can feel safe returning to these environments and employers can have greater certainty on working hours, capacity and avoid further disruption.
The UK has led the way with its “test to suppress” Moonshots programme, announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, including the beginning of mass testing in education with teachers and staff in secondary schools beginning self-testing during February with primary schools following shortly after. In guidance from Public Health England, school staff have been asked to use lateral flow tests twice a week to ensure they are COVID free, with other nations expected to follow as they try to identify new variants and strains of the virus so that they are able to reduce the need for future likelihood and closures in education.
The key benefit of these lateral flow antigen tests is their ability to identify asymptomatic carriers of the virus and prevent transmission at the earliest point. This has become even more vital due to the ability for the virus to mutate to become more infectious as we have seen in the UK (Kent), South Africa and Brazil.
The World Nano Foundation and pandemic experts say regular use of inexpensive mass lateral flow rapid antigen test kits is the way to beat COVID-19, its variants, and future viruses. The adoption of rapid mass testing across populations can help pinpoint cases of the virus, reducing the likelihood of transmission and allowing those in education to feel more secure when returning to busy schools and universities, as well as allowing education professionals to deliver the highest standard of teaching once again.
As vaccination quickens across the board, the next prize is to get the world's economies moving, with mass frequent testing as the key, using the mantra 'test to suppress', and as an early warning system to protect against new strains and future outbreaks.
In what many believe was a game changer in preventing lockdowns, in communities and workplaces lateral flow rapid test kits (LFTs) have been mobilised now for door-to-door delivery – the UK government has secured more than 400 million of these kits – for its “Test to Suppress” strategy as well as to address fears that the South African variant had broken out in areas of the country.
Many other countries, including the US, Canada, Japan, France, Hungary as well as industries including entertainment, aviation, travel and energy to name but a few are now adopting this regular rapid testing strategy.
Innova Medical – the world's largest manufacturer of rapid lateral flow antigen tests is ramping up to 50 million a day by the spring – has also confirmed that its COVID-19 product is effective in detecting variant strains such as the British (Kent), South African, and Brazilian variants, which appear more contagious than the earlier strains.
"As these dangerous strains show signs of increased transmissibility across communities, the global effort to eliminate COVID-19 requires frequent, comprehensive and equitable testing that can detect these emerging strains," said Daniel Elliott, President and CEO of Innova Medical Group.
Workplace and community rapid mass testing is already starting to take place to keep economies moving and the entertainment and sports industries are said to be looking at a ‘day pass’ testing approach using LFT kits, in the same way that temperature checks were made on people using restaurants and pubs between lockdowns.
World Health Organisation Special Envoy on COVID-19, David Nabarro, had already suggested this approach:
"We've seen it (rapid mass testing) used in many different locations, for example in trying to keep aircraft free of people who’ve got COVID or looking after major events.”
A UK Government initiative offering LFTs in workplaces - healthcare, education, and local authorities, with private companies such as Royal Mail, the DVLA and Tate & Lyle Sugars, Jaguar, Bentley, John Lewis, London Heathrow Airport, Octopus Energy and Tata Steel also adopting frequent rapid testing.
Oxford's Regius Professor of Medicine, Sir John Bell underlined the benefit of these tests removing infectious people from high-risk environments: “They've found 25,000 cases just in healthcare, which may have prevented tens of thousands of cases of the disease.”
The World Nano Foundation (WNF) promotes healthcare technology and predicts that mass testing is central to future pandemic protection.
The not-for-profit organisation’s Co-founder Paul Sheedy said: “Our research shows how healthcare diagnostics technology will shift dramatically to a more decentralised community early intervention model, against potential epidemics and pandemics.
“Our own COVIDlytics™ modelling shows that an intensive front line ‘Test to Suppress’ campaign using rapid test kits available to the individual will allow early detection and immediate isolation, reducing the need for lockdowns.
“And our simulation maps how consecutive daily tests for three days can rapidly identify and isolate infectious people. Weekly testing can then sustain a low infection rate even in a large population.
“A key point previously missed by some experts is that high quality rapid lateral flow tests are not for people who already think they have COVID-19; it's about everyone else testing frequently to check they are not infectious.
“Used alongside vaccines and other preventative methods, these simple tests have been developed from colloidal gold nanoparticle research and are a vital component in the battle to defeat the virus and it's future variants.
“With the work that we do, we know that there are even more exciting technologies on the way that will be central to the world’s fight for pandemic protection and future healthcare.
“We have already seen the danger from not being on our guard against renewed viral threats. Spanish Flu struck in 1918, killing up to 50 million people in four waves, the last two being most deadly because public health warnings were not adhered to.”
The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Xinde Marine News.
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