COVID-19 Testing Solution Keeps Water Utility and Port Services Flowing in New Zealand
With critical water and port services in danger of being delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand, DKSH moved quickly to supply the necessary turnkey employee testing and surveillance solutions to these utility service providers.
Our customer is New Zealand’s leading water utility company, supplying safe water and wastewater services to over 1.7 million people in the Auckland region. Its testing facilities monitor and test drinking water and wastewater for over a third of New Zealand’s population.
Another customer to who we provided a similar COVID-19 testing solution operates a diverse range of port facilities and services for the market, including boating, forestry, fishing, marine farming, and tourism. It also operates the second-largest marina in New Zealand.
Challenge
The COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s isolation restrictions placed significant risks on the business continuity of critical operations. Many of our customers in the market were unable to manage the rapid spread of the virus within their workforce. The risks were escalated by the limited testing options available then.
One testing option was by going through a centralized pathology laboratory service where a nasopharyngeal swab sample was submitted to each district health board’s pathology laboratory for molecular diagnostic testing. However, this takes more than three days to obtain the result due to the high demand from the population and the affected movement and logistics service.
The other alternative was to use rapid antigen test kits which were seen as unreliable due to their often inaccurate readings.
Approach
As both customers were involved in critical utility supply services, we decide to develop a turnkey COVID-19 surveillance solution that they were able to rapidly implement using their existing facilities and human resources.
The solutions were developed by working closely across the organization with input from the laboratory, consumables team, application specialist, and territory manager. We partnered with a local pathology specialist and PCR reagent manufacturer who designed and validated the test methods and equipment.
For the equipment, we supplied and installed biosafety cabinets, qPCR instruments, PCR reagents, pipettes, heat blocks, centrifuges, and crucial consumables including PCR tubes, pipette tips, and PPEs. With this solution in place, our customers were able to obtain immediate visibility on the infection status of their employees at the beginning, manage manpower shifts, and quickly minimize the spread of any probable infection.
Result
The testing and surveillance solutions allowed our customers to continue providing their critical utility and port services to the businesses and communities they serve in the market. As employees were better monitored and their well-being managed efficiently, they managed to overcome any major disruptions to their human resource capabilities.
DKSH’s COVID-19 PCR employee screening program provided us with an amazing risk reduction and employee wellbeing tool. On the first day itself after commissioning and training, we detected a small outbreak in a critical workforce group. The ability to turn around routine screening and provide same-day results, previously it took two to three days, was powerful for managers.
– Representative from the customer
This allowed us to quickly isolate the staff and prevent the undue spread of the virus. The solution was so simple to learn, it also enabled non-lab volunteers to operate the process. We now have several amateur microbiologists who enjoy playing a vital role in the protection of a critical workforce in a lifeline utility organization.
