COVID-19 Bulk Testing For Your Organization

As businesses try ensuring workers' and customers' safety, they are looking for ways to test their employees for Covid-19 before they resume work after the Christmas holidays. Such preventive measures are important to keep the COVID-19 virus at bay and boost the employees' confidence about returning to work. However, companies face some bottlenecks, such as access to coronavirus testing for their employees and long delays in receiving results, both pave the way for an outbreak of the virus. Further, companies are unlikely to carry out frequent testing until it is less costly and faster. The good news is that the WHO-approved rapid antigen tests have started rolling across the states. As these rapid tests show on-the-spot results within 15-30 minutes rather than days, bulk testing in the organization would become easy and manageable. While the tests may not catch all cases, they could allow many infectious people to be spotted out before they have symptoms and go into isolation. By screening the employees in bulk and getting the ones who test positive to go in quarantine, the organizations can use the tests to stamp out the virus's outbreak at the workplace without turning to strict restrictions.

Catch The Infection Before It Results In Outbreak

How can you get to know to isolate if you are not displaying any symptoms of COVID-19? With a rise in asymptomatic cases, bulk testing for COVID-19 is a good potential measure to control the pandemic's spread as it is about identifying those who may have a virus but being asymptomatic may not know it yet and maybe passing it on silently. Instead of being used as a diagnostic tool, the rapid tests allowing bulk testing is a form of a proactive measure aimed at preventing the outbreaks. Organizations can thus keep new case numbers low at their workplaces by conducting a bulk screening of the employees. Moreover, with a very low turnaround time of the antigen tests, bulk testing saves time and enables the organizations to get the maximum number of results within the same day.

How is bulk testing conducted?

Saliva-based tests and antigen tests can be done for bulk testing as these tests return results within a short time ranging from few minutes to few hours, depending on the test. Another test that allows mass testing is a lateral flow test, which is easy, cheap, and very fast. Like a pregnancy test, this one-piece kit of the lateral flow test marks a positive test when fluid from a nasal swab or saliva is applied on one end. It eliminates the need for laboratories, thus saving time and money.

Issues that the organizations may face

Bulk testing typically requires screening people in a shared space at least once a week, whether or not they have symptoms. Keeping in mind the resistance towards wearing masks, it would not be easy to get full support from the employees for frequent testing. However, the organizations can attach some incentives with the screening to motivate employees for active participation in the mass testing.

Takeaway:

One of the biggest challenges, mainly in large organizations, is the timely identification and monitoring of the COVID-19 cases. Bulk testing allowing functional tracing and self-isolation can prove to control the virus to a large extent. After getting a serious economic and financial blow due to the lockdown earlier in 2020, businesses cannot afford yet another. To prevent any such scenario in the wake of the second wave, bulk testing can be a good solution when combined with other preventive measures, like social distancing, face-covering, and contact tracing, to be effective.

A fully equipped bulk testing facility is available at TrueCare24. Please make an appointment with our consultant to know how you can get speedy tests for your employees.

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