COVID-19 has had unimaginable impacts on the global economy and businesses have had to rapidly adapt to social distancing, remote work environments and doing more with fewer resources to ensure that essential services can still be provided. We are proud to share the stories of how our portfolio companies are enabling their clients to overcome known and emerging challenges associated with the COVID-19 outbreak.
Producing urgently needed COVID-19 tests
As COVID-19 cases spiked around the world, the availability of clinical tests became a global sourcing challenge for many governments. Recognized internationally as a leader in rapid-results molecular diagnostic testing, LuminUltra responded to the Canadian Prime Minister’s call for action and has applied its specialized expertise and manufacturing capabilities to produce 500,000 clinical COVID-19 tests per week for the Canadian Government and is uniquely positioned to help other global public health agencies by further ramping up production. In addition, the company has developed environmental monitoring solutions to quickly and accurately test for the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in a variety of environments including surfaces, air and wastewater.
Preventing costly sewage backups
Costly incidents of sewage overflowing through manhole covers and spewing untreated waste on city streets has become a regular occurrence during the COVID-19 crisis. The flushing of wipes, rubber gloves, towels and other items have caused immediate backups and many utilities are still ‘blind’ to the potential new blockages that are forming. SmartCover offers a proactive, remote monitoring solution to help detect and prevent sewer spills. The smart devices can be quickly installed on manhole covers and feature secure cloud-based data storage, powerful analytics and alert settings. As sewer blockage headlines grew, the company received hundreds of orders from new and existing customers for monitoring units to help utilities gain visibility into their sewer networks.
Eliminating coronavirus in wastewater sludge
Testing of sewage to detect coronavirus particles is showing promise, however it is estimated that the virus can live in wastewater sludge for over 14 days and could still be in a highly transmittable state. BCR, which specializes in technologies that convert waste sludge into safe end-products, has successfully completed testing which confirmed the removal of 99% of coronavirus in sludge. The company has started planning for several coronavirus sludge treatment projects and is producing mobile CleanB® treatment units which can be rapidly deployed to areas with high rates of infection to help in the COVID-19 fight.
Enabling remote work environments in the Cloud
As governments around the world have declared lockdowns in the battle against COVID-19, employers have had to search for innovative ways to run mission-critical operations from remote locations. With over 1,000 cities and agencies relying on their software platform to collect and analyze water and wastewater related data, Aquatic Informatics is playing a critical role to help ensure seamless remote operations. Many existing customers have upgraded to cloud-based versions of their software, which feature a high level of user control for data access and security. New cloud-based software features enable remote users to maintain high productivity through enhanced data analytics and event notifications, in addition to automated collection and organizational functions.