Markets Shaped by Coronavirus Technology and Pharmaceutical Solutions

Hawk Environmental Offers Viral Test Kits for High Traffic Areas in Buildings

Aanika Biosciences has What Could be an Inexpensive Surface Testing Approach

Businesses can do Their Own Surface Testing

Modern Healthcare Corporation has N-80 Mask

Masks are Part of a Combined Program to Reduce the Odds to Near Zero

Airplanes are Relatively Safe with the Following Guidelines

Lots of Masks and Air Purifiers at Morrison Dental

Auto Manufacturers Add More Air Purification Capability

COVID Outbreak at German Slaughterhouse

 

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Markets Shaped by Coronavirus Technology and Pharmaceutical Solutions

All the air, water, energy and cleanroom markets for which McIlvaine forecasts future revenues will be greatly affected  by the Coronavirus. There  are two specific solutions which will mitigate the impact and allow return to a new normal.  One is Coronavirus Technology Solutions. This service with Daily Alerts is showing a path for safe resumption of near normal activities with filtered air, masks, monitoring, decontamination  and other PPE.

Coronavirus Pharmaceutical Solutions analyzes the vaccines, therapies, reagents, and test kits which will also have major impact on the return to near normal. The first step is to find products  which will solve the problem but an equally big challenge is to produce the hundreds of millions of doses which would be necessary.

McIlvaine has been publishing Cleanroom Projects for many years. This service will help analyze the production quantities of new vaccines and therapies. It will also forecast the timing for effective use. The initial research and trials being carried on by hundreds of pharmaceutical companies need to be analyzed and determinations made about the future success of these products. Detailed tracking of each major product and the company or companies producing it is provided.   Click here for a sample profile of Gilead and remdesivir.

Going forward all the McIlvaine market reports will rely on these two analyses to help predict future markets. Despite the claims that we can resume normal routines even if millions die from COVID McIlvaine believes that this will not be the case. So near normal activity will return only with some combination of the two solutions.

Example: McIlvaine is analyzing the impact on media suppliers such as Berry Global. The company has over $12 billion in global sales with home, health and personal care accounting for 30% of the total. Consumer packaging and other businesses are hurt by the pandemic.

Under a base case where the situation continues to slowly improve the relative magnitude on normal business could be a negative 14 whereas growth opportunities would be a positive 10.  Air filtration media will be needed to capture the virus. On the other hand the Merv 8 market may be reduced by the selection of more efficient media. There will be reduced purchases in some of the air filter segments associated with industrial activity. There will be minor positive impact on liquid filtration media. A large number of vaccine and therapy plants will be built. They will use cartridges. But this revenue will be offset by slowdown in food, chemical, and energy which are major cartridge consumers.  Reemay cartridges are also used in the pool and spa markets which are being negatively impacted.

Berry is expanding mask media production in France, Germany, and the U.S. A big initiative is a new mask for the general population. The newly introduced Synergex ONE provides a multilayer nonwoven composite product in a single sheet, as an alternative to traditional face mask layer structures. This new material will be manufactured in Europe and serve the European market and is available immediately. the near term potential is modest but longer term this product could be a leading revenue generator for the company.  If three billion people average mask purchases of $10/yr the market would be  60 billon or five times greater than the present sales of Berry.

 

More gown media will also be sold. There will be a greater positive than negative effect on wipes. Consumer packaging and other business will be negatively impacted by an amount which will offset any gains from coronavirus related activities. The Berry analysis is shown at  http://home.mcilvainecompany.com/images/berry_2020-05-19.pdf

For all the companies supplying air, water, cleanroom, and energy products the future depends on the answer to few questions. To what extent does coronavirus travel like cigarette smoke long distances and retain viability over time?  When will successful vaccines and therapies be available?  Will outbreaks reoccur each year? Will people take advantage of the technology solutions? Every market forecast needs to make assumptions about the answers to these questions.

Details on the reports are available at www.mcilvainecompany.com

Hawk Environmental Offers Viral Test Kits for High Traffic Areas in Buildings

Despite the uncertainty of viral-RNA tests, some companies are already offering services for high-traffic areas within buildings. “Some businesses may have risk-management teams or insurance companies that will require them to do testing,” says Dan Ventura, owner of Hawk Environmental Services in Seattle, which tests for a variety of hazards from mold to bacteria to asbestos and has recently added coronavirus to the list. Ventura says that if several employees fall ill, managers may want to thoroughly clean the facility and then use the tests to prove there is no detectable viral RNA. Others may ramp up their cleaning procedures upon finding RNA where it hasn’t been before. The testing, he adds, “will allow these buildings to stay open, stay running, and provide a second level of assurance.”

But the tests can take several days to process, which may make the results moot. To shorten the wait time, Ventura offers expedited testing — at a price. Hawk will ship swabbing kits to customers, which then go to a third-party lab. (Ventura declined to name the lab, citing worry that it would be inundated by requests and suffer processing bottlenecks.) The cost ranges from $365 per swab with a four-day turnaround time to $605 per swab for a 24-hour turnaround — prices that Ventura says are “affordable when looked at through the lens of liability of the operation.”

How many swabs are needed is unclear, and there are no clear guidelines? Ventura says he leaves it to businesses to decide how many to use and the size of the sampling areas.  One swab per ft2 has been a standard applied in some non COVID settings.

 Aanika Biosciences has What Could be an Inexpensive Surface Testing Approach

Aanika Biosciences in Brooklyn is developing a way for companies to trace and authenticate their supply chains by tagging products with a harmless microbe, which can serve as a biological barcode. To detect the microbial DNA, Aanika uses chemical methods and equipment that can also be used to detect coronavirus RNA, says biologist Ellen Jorgensen, the company’s chief scientific officer.

In March, Jorgensen called New York City officials to offer help with testing coronavirus in buildings. The company’s pricing isn’t set yet, but Jorgensen also offered to do free testing for New York schools.

Businesses can do Their Own Surface Testing

ChaiBio, a biotech company in Santa Clara, California is selling test equipment directly to businesses, which would eliminate long waits for test results. Traditional PCR machines used in research labs can cost $200,000, but ChaiBio sells versions for less than $10,000. Originally developed for the food industry, the machines are used by brewers to detect bacteria that spoil beer.

When Covid-19 arrived, ChaiBio developed a process to test for the new coronavirus. A starter pack for the virus costs $8,500 and includes the machine, swabs, and other testing materials. Using the ChaiBio machine doesn’t require a degree in biology and takes less than an hour, says CEO and cofounder Josh Perfetto. Unlike traditional PCR machines, which look for the virus’s entire sequence of RNA, ChaiBio’s looks for the genetic pieces specific only to the organism of interest, which cuts time, complexity, and cost. “You put your sample in the device and it gives you the result on the computer screen,” he says.

Modern Healthcare Corporation has N-80 Mask

Motex, manufactures disposable medical surgical wound dressings and medical tapes as well as the varied face masks in Taiwan. It has  plants located in Thailand, Shanghai and Taiwan. They  have the certificates of ISO, CE, GMP. and some items with US FDA510K approved. The company was established in 1978 and has less than 100 employees. It offers N80 masks. This designation is being used by those who are offering a mask for the general population which is higher efficiency than most masks being worn by the public but would be 80% efficient on 0.3 micron particles in contrast to the 95%  N95.

 

Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary has claimed that if everyone wore face masks on planes and public transport, it would ''eliminate the risk of spreading Covid-19 by about 98.5%''.

O'Leary, who wants to restart flights in July, was speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. He called the government's plan to quarantine travelers for 14 days "ineffectual" and "unmanageable".

O'Leary said the 98.5% figure came from a study by the Mater Hospital in Dublin.

 

Airplanes are Relatively Safe with the Following Guidelines

Joseph Allen, assistant professor of exposure assessment science at Harvard, argues that despite what you may think, “you don’t get sick on airplanes more than anywhere else.”

Allen says airlines have, for many years, worked to keep passengers safe from disease while they travel.

 

“The ventilation system requirements for airplanes meet the levels recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for use with COVID-19 patients in airborne infection isolation rooms,” Allen said.

 

Allen also points to a study about a person suffering from tuberculosis who took a flight with 169 other passengers. According to the study, the median risk of infection to the other passengers on the airplane was between 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 1 million, Allen said.

 

Wearing a mask, as some airlines now require, reduced the incidence of infection another tenfold, he said.

Allen wrote that airplanes take care to keep the environment within the plane safe by exchanging the air in the cabin 10 to 12 times an hour.

 

“To get technical, airplanes deliver 10 to 12 air changes per hour. In a hospital isolation room, the minimum target is six air changes per hour for existing facilities and 12 air changes per hour for new.”

 

“Airplanes also use the same air filter — a HEPA filter — recommended by the CDC for isolation rooms with recirculated air. Such filters capture 99.97% of airborne particles.”

Allen wrote that there are several things that travelers, airports and airlines can do to make the trip a safer one in terms of avoiding potential infection by the novel coronavirus.

 

Here is what Allen suggests travelers do:

·         Wear a mask.

·         Wash your hands frequently.

·         Maintain social distancing as much as you can.

Here is what Allen would like to see airports do:

·         Require masks in the airport.

·         Make bathrooms touchless.

·         Increase ventilation rates.

·         Consider deploying upper-room germicidal UV fixtures in areas with high-occupant density.

·         Institute temperature screening.

·         Deploy hand-sanitizer stations.

·         Require passengers stay in a designated area once they check-in and come to the gate they will depart from.

Allen has these tips for airlines:

·         Ensure gate-based ventilation is operating during boarding and disembarkation.

·         Have a plan for loading the airplane.

·         Require masks.

·         Provide meals and bottled water during boarding and discontinue in-flight meal and drink service.

Lots of Masks and Air Purifiers at Morrison Dental

Dr. Robert Morrison, CEO and chief clinical officer of Morrison Dental Group, a family run dental practice with locations throughout Virginia including Williamsburg, Newport News and Hampton, said they have been open during the pandemic and treating emergency patients.

“The idea was to keep them out of emergency rooms,” he said, adding they were treating some patients from Olde Towne clinic, urgent care and emergency rooms. “Forty percent of the patients were not our patients.”

While the practice has since resumed normal operations providing preventative care such as regular cleanings, they are still seeing a significant number of patients from other practices needing emergency care, Morrison said.

 Staff members have their temperature checked and are screened daily, Morrison said.

Staff must wear a mask at all the time, regardless of whether or not they are in the treatment room with a patient and are required to use PPE, eye protections and gloves during patient appointments.

Other ways the practice has worked to reduce the amount of aerosol in the room is installing air purifiers throughout the building in treatment rooms, offices and lobby areas at each location.

In addition to filtering the air, the new purifiers have HEPA filters and use UV light to filter pathogens, too.

The dental practice has also started telehealth or teledentistry, having video visits with their patients.

“We do that with a lot of emergency patients [to] assess their condition,” he said. “We do a lot of our follow up appointments that way.”

Auto Manufacturers Add More Air Purification Capability

Geely launched vehicles with intelligent air purification systems in February 2020. The OEM invested USD 53 million to develop healthy, intelligent vehicles. All the upcoming 2020 Geely vehicles will have these systems.

SAIC Motor announced new UV based sterilization systems for its upcoming vehicles. Yanfeng, a leading interior manufacturer unveiled Wellness Pod, a UV air sanitization device specially targeted for ride sharing services. OEMs and air purification systems manufacturers are increasingly adopting measures to offer cabin sterilization features to protect occupants from viruses and other gaseous particles & pollutants. These vehicles use HVAC systems with multi-layer cabin filters.

The cabin filters are capable of preventing pollen and allergens from entering the cabin. These vehicles have mask level air filtration efficiency. Post pandemic, these features will be beneficial for people with allergies to breathe easily inside the cabin

COVID Outbreak at German Slaughterhouse

 

A large coronavirus outbreak was reported at a German slaughterhouse on Monday. In the last two weeks, meat-processing plants have been the site of three other major outbreaks.

At least 92 workers at a slaughterhouse in Dissen in Lower Saxony have tested positive, the city of Osnabrück announced late on Sunday. Those infected and members of their households have been placed in quarantine and production has been stopped.

 

The German government's "Coronavirus Cabinet" was set to discuss changes to workplace safety regulations, with a particular eye on slaughterhouses. Concerns have been raised about the working and living conditions of slaughterhouse workers, where many of the employees are eastern European temporary workers brought into feed Germany's appetite for cheap meat.