Touch point surface testing only £67 with same day results, helping you validate your current Covid-19 controls
Surface swab sampling of touch points can provide reassurance, protect business continuity and identify the presence of asymptomatic staff. Workplaces are prime sites for the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Shared spaces with high levels of interaction and communal surfaces have increased amounts of microbial activity which easily spread from person to person.
Surface touch points in your workplace have the highest concentration of microbes. They act as vectors for the spread of viruses. Typical communal touch point areas include refrigerators, drawer handles, entrance/exit doors and kettle/coffee machines etc.
Our COVID19 touch point surface testing kits provide a cost-effective and convenient solution to monitor your workplace.
The swab kits have a long shelf life (1 year+) and therefore can be ordered in large batches, they can be stored at room temperature.
Yes, you can use a single swab to sample a number of areas, for example in a kitchen you could swab the door push bar, kettle and fridge door. As a rule of thumb you need to swab a minimum area of 25cm2 and stop swabbing when the bud of the swab becomes dry.
Each swab kit contains detailed illustrative instructions that can be easily followed.
Surface testing can be used for a number of reasons within your workplace and the sampling strategies will vary depending on your overall objectives:
Ongoing Reassurance & Business Continuity Protection requires implementing a regular sampling and testing regime of the high touch point surfaces within your business premises. Random sampling should be carried out on a weekly basis or more frequently to quickly identify the presence of the virus.
Post Deep Clean Validation sampling of appropriate surfaces should be carried out as a one of exercise to confirm the effectiveness of your cleaning methods. This testing strategy is particular useful following the identification of a positive case within the workplace.
Identification of Asymptomatic Workers within the workforce can be achieved by implementing a regular testing regime of the high touch, which should then be sampled and tested twice a week.
Yes, sampled swabs can be returned to us in the normal postal system. The contents of the swabs are harmless at the completion of the sampling stage due to our unique one step DNA/RNA extract buffer. After swabbing the surface to be sampled the tip of the swab is submerged in the extract buffer rendering the virus harmless and stabilising the RNA for up to 72hrs at room temperature.
We advise that all swabs to be tested are returned to us on the same day of sampling using a courier or by royalmail registered post.
The RT-PCR (polymerasse chain reaction) technology that we use to identify the presence of the virus in swab samples is the gold standard in SARS-CoV-2 detection.
Our swabbing procedure has been independantly validated and has been proven to detect the presence of the virus with 95% repeatability at levels as low as 290 viral copies/swab.
The testing technique is very specific and will only return a positive result if the RNA of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is present on the swab.
We use positive and negative controls during each batch of tests to ensure no false positives are returned. Furthermore, our reagants contain UNG which prevents carryover and amplicon contamination.
A positive result obtained from a swabbed surface confirms the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It also confirms that any cleaning disinfectants used on the surface have not been effective at denaturing the virus and therefore viral RNA is still intact.
How effective are your cleaning regimes at preventing the spread of Covid-19 in your workplace?
Our hygiene audits are designed to review and validate the effectiveness of cleaning regimes which focus on preventing the spread of COVID-19 within the workplace.
Communal surface touch points in your workplace have the highest concentration of microbes and therefore they act as vectors for the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
It is for this reason that goverment guidance puts an emphasis on workplaces to implement an appropriate hygiene control regime.
Keeping your workplace clean reduces the potential for coronavirus to spread and is a critical part of making and keeping your business ‘COVID-secure’. Whether you use internal cleaners or specialist cleaning contractors it is important to validate the effectiveness of these hygiene controls.
A cleaning regime must be appropriate for your workplace, the volume of traffic, number of potential touch points and type of environment will all effect the frequency and level of cleaning that is required.
The 3 most common findings identified during a hygiene audit are as follows:
ATP testing is a rapid testing method used to quickly assess the cleanliness of surfaces. Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) is present in all organic material and is the universal unit of energy used in all living cells.
Contaminated surfaces and equipment can quickly lead to the spread of the virus, and ultimately, the infection of personnel. ATP cleaning verification provides accurate and meaningful results that can help a facility define and monitor a cleaning standard to make sure that standard is maintained.
Your first audit will go a long way to significantly improving the hygiene standards within your workplace. The audit will confirm that your cleaning chemicals and techniques are adequate to eliminate the presence of the virus on touch points and identify hotspots that might require further attention.
If the findings are consistently followed moving forward a single audit should be sufficient.
Reduce the likelihood of airborne covid-19 transmission in your workplace
It is now widely accepted that poor air qaulity and inadequate levels of ventilation can be a contributing factor to the airborne spread of the SARs-Cov2 virus.
It remains unclear exactly how long the COVID-19 virus can survive in the air, it has been suggested that it may be possible for the virus to survive in small droplets exhaled by an infected person for up to 3 hours.
These droplets can travel distances of meters or tens of meters in the air and carry their viral content. Science explains the mechanisms of such transport and there is evidence that this is a significant route of infection in indoor environments.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has urged hospitals to better manage their air quality and therefore believe that this is a contributing factor to the spread of the virus.
Workforce covid-19 surveillance screening from £36 per employee / week
Protect business continuity and identify the presence of asymptomatic staff using our COVID-19 staff screening surveillance service.
Routine COVID-19 surveillance testing gives you early warning of infection, allowing targeted measures to be taken to stop the spread.
COVID-19 surveillance looks for the presence of infection in groups to inform health management decisions at the population level. Ongoing surveillance is especially effective with groups in repeated contact, such as classroom cohorts or work teams.
Our Surveillance solution uses gold standard RT-qPCR technology which is the most sensitive COVID detection method according to the CDC.
Diagnostic testing looks for occurrence of COVID-19 at the individual level when there is a reason to believe an individual may be infected. Surveillance testing looks for infection within a population or community, and can be used for making health management decisions at the population level.
For example, if routine COVID-19 surveillance reveals the presence of infection in a workplace population, management might perform diagnostic testing to determine who is infected, and could even elect to close a facility pending diagnostic test results to prevent further spread.
Most customers test twice a week. Testing at least 2 times per week allows you to detect COVID-19 in its earliest stages of infection with minimal cost and disruption to your school or workplace. As test results are representative of only the specific time of test, testing frequency is an important consideration for detecting infection. A sporadic testing regimen could lead to undetected infections in a population. Even testing once a week allows you to detect and slow the spread of COVID compared to no testing effort at all.
No. Our COVID-19 Surveillance Test Kit is marketed for surveillance and research use only. It is not for use in diagnostic procedures. Individual results may not be returned to the tested population. To prevent obtaining individual results in the first place, it is recommended to pool samples. Sample pooling also increases the capacity and speed of testing efforts and reduces costs.
RT-qPCR, or reverse-transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction, provides accurate, quantitative results within hours. It is the current gold standard method to test for SARS-CoV-2 infection due to it’s high sensitivity. RT-qPCR can detect a miniscule amount of RNA, specific to the pathogen, and make exponential copies of it until there are over one billion copies of that particular RNA segment. This is why RT-qPCR is able to detect an infection at earlier stages, even when viral loads are low. Our COVID Surveillance solution can detect an infection with as little as 5.8 viral copies per microliter of saliva.
Rapid antigen tests can provide results faster than RT-qPCR but at the expense of accuracy and sensitivity. Rapid antigen tests detect proteins on the surface of the virus, yielding qualitative results that heavily depend on higher viral loads for detection. Compared to RT-qPCR, antigen tests need a sample to contain thousands, or even tens of thousands, of viral particles per microliter to produce a positive result.
In cases where the sample has low amounts of virus, rapid antigen tests may be unable to detect a COVID infection and give a false-negative result. Multiple studies, including guidance by the CDC, concur that the sensitivity of rapid antigen tests are significantly lower than RT-qPCR8. One study found that rapid antigen tests detected between 11.1% – 45.7% of RT-qPCR-positive samples from COVID-19 patients. Due to the lower sensitivity of antigen tests, the FDA10 and CDC11 recommend confirming negative results with a RT-qPCR test.
Due to the minimally invasive and painless nature of saliva collection, saliva is more conducive for routine surveillance testing. Saliva is self-collected and eliminates the need to train specialized healthcare personnel on the collection process, making it easy to collect saliva on a regular basis. Studies have also found that saliva is as sensitive, if not more sensitive, than nasopharyngeal swabs in detecting COVID-19. In addition, the complicated sampling procedure of nasopharyngeal swabbing increases the risk of variable and unreliable results.
If infection is detected within a pooled group we advise that the following actions are taken:
2023-07-01
The law says employers must make sure there’s an adequate supply of fresh air in the workplace. There are two ways of maximising the level of fresh air in a workspace, either by natural and / or mechanical ventilation. Ventilation control measures play an essential role in improving air quality and staff well being.
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