Banking staff home working during COVID-19 has disrupted the sector like most industries, but thanks to technology and a steep pandemic-driven rise in cashless transactions, the industry has been able to operate and serve its customers.
But industry watchers question if the industry’s big city offices and high street branches can remain ghost-like for much longer, in the face of low-cost easy access to frequent rapid mass testing along with full government support in this strategy.
As already seen in other industries such as manufacturing, food, and aviation; using rapid mass testing has stopped transmission in workplaces, saving millions in lost revenue and thousands of work hours. Bentley reported that they had 100% success at preventing transmission with no asymptomatic workers coming into the workplace and infecting others, because of their frequent rapid testing programme.
The UK Government has just launched a scheme offering free mass lateral flow rapid antigen test kits (LFTs) to large organisations such as the Royal Mail, John Lewis, Jaguar, London Heathrow Airport, Tate & Lyle and the DVLA – the big banks will need to follow suit.
Goldman Sachs, the huge US-based multinational investment bank, was early into testing, with its UK arm reported last October to be offering free mass testing to any of its 6,000-strong London workforce who chose to return to the office.
The same month, Computer Weekly trumpeted how Barclays had proved IT could make a success of ‘home-working’ yet revealed how 30,000 of the UK-based banking giant’s 85,000 staff globally still needed to go to the office.
Whether this or the reported 10% of attendees at the London offices of others such as HSBC and UBS is being facilitated by mass testing, has not been revealed.
~Novel Serialisation: Heavens Fire~
But there was heavyweight support this month (February) from Canada’s banking sector with the launch of a mass rapid testing pilot instigated by the University of Toronto, involving the Bank of Nova Scotia – Canada’s No.3 bank, ranked 38th in the world – and other leading Canadian corporations including Air Canada and Canada Pension Plan Investments.
The initiative aims to give Canada a corporate road map to curbing the spread of COVID-19 in workplaces and includes Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England and Canadian author and environmentalist Margaret Atwood – writer of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ – as ‘thought leaders’.
Atwood raised the question: “How soon can we have a cheap, buy-it-at-the-drugstore, self-administered test?”
The answer is right now, according to project spokesman Ajay Agrawal: “What we are trying to do is break the chain of transmission. We are using screening to stop one infected person from infecting other people in the workplace.”
He added that all parties saw this as the key to lift severe lockdown measures that have closed or bankrupted many Canadian businesses: “They look across the country and all they see is carnage – economic carnage.”
The World Nano Foundation and pandemic experts confirm that the Canadian pilot is on the right course: regular mass lateral flow rapid antigen testing can beat COVID-19, its variants, and future viruses. It can help pinpoint virus cases, reducing likelihood of transmission and allowing those in education and the workplace to feel more secure.
As vaccination steps up, the next prize is to get economies moving, using LFTs and the mantra ‘test to suppress’, and as an early warning system to protect against new strains and future outbreaks.
Easy-to-use test gives results in 20 minutes
The simple-to-manufacture rapid tests, using recent nanotechnology breakthroughs, have shown a thousand-fold increase in the effectiveness and accuracy of such testing. The kits can produce a positive result even when there are fewer viral antigens in the sample – vital for finding asymptomatic individuals and ‘super-spreaders’.
In what many believe is a game changer in preventing further lockdowns, LFTs have now also been mobilised by the UK Government for door-to-door delivery – it has secured more than 400 million such kits – for a test to suppress strategy and to address fears that the South African variant had broken out in certain areas.
This strategy along with other nations, including the US, Japan, Canada, Slovakia, Spain, France, and Hungary, as well as industries including entertainment, aviation, travel, and energy.
Innova Medical, the world’s largest manufacturer of LFTs is ramping up production from its current 10 million kits a day to 50 million by spring, confirming also that its COVID-19 product can detect the apparently more contagious UK (Kent), South African, and Brazilian variants.
“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.
Elliot added that numerous studies show rapid antigen tests are an important tool for identifying infectious people quickly and equitably, even when they may not have COVID-19 symptoms, in ways not possible with slower, more expensive, centralised lab-based tests.
The entertainment and sports industries are said to be looking at a ‘day pass’ testing approach using LFT kits, just as 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.”
Oxford University researchers found the UK Government’s most sensitive LFTs detected 83-90% of all infectious cases of COVID-19 – the UK has invested more than £1.5bn in these test kits so far.
And 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.”
Tim Peto, Professor of Medicine, Infectious Disease, Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, Oxford University addressed the contrasts between PCR (polymerase chain reaction) swab testing and lateral flow kits:
“PCR is very good at telling you’ve had the virus or got the virus, but it doesn’t tell you whether you are infectious or not and the other problem about the swab test is that it takes a day or two…to get the answer back. The LFT has the enormous advantage of giving you an answer in about 30 minutes.”
He said this allows immediate self-isolation and individuals can also quickly advise their contacts so, “within a few hours, a local outbreak can be detected. This can’t be done with the swab (PCR) tests” adding that LFTs “detect people with high viral loads…the very people who are infectious.”
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 LFTs 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 defeating the virus and it’s future variants.
“Rapid community testing is simpler, faster, cheaper, more effective and mobilises everyone to help themselves, their relatives, friends, and colleagues, to keep everyone safe.
“We know 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.”
Sheedy predicted a post-COVID healthcare revolution with sector investment forecast to grow nearly 50% a year towards a market set to be worth $1.333 trillion by 2027 (source: PitchBook Investment Monitoring – January 2021). The acceleration highlights wide recognition that the world cannot afford the human and economic cost of another pandemic.
Some capital to fuel that phenomenal growth could come from the Pandemic Protection alternative investment fund operated by Vector Innovation Fund in Luxembourg, focused on limiting the effect of long form Covid-19 and guarding against future pandemics, whilst minimising any impact on the global economy and healthcare provision and preparedness.
