Relay, Fio sign COVID testing deal for Toronto airport
2021-03-10 16:05 ET - News Release
Mr. Clark Kent reports
RELAY MEDICAL & FIO EXECUTE AGREEMENT TO PROVIDE COVID-19 RAPID TESTING AT TORONTO PEARSON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Further to its press release on Feb. 24, 2021, Fionet Rapid Response Group Inc. (FRR) (the joint venture company of Relay Medical Corp. and Fio Corp.) and the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA) have executed the aforementioned agreement that sees the Fionet pandemic management platform deployed for on-site COVID-19 rapid testing and real-time reporting at Toronto Pearson International Airport.
This multimillion-dollar program, with direct application to testing staff and restoring flights departing Toronto Pearson, is financed by the government of Canada through the National Research Council of Canada's Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP).
Under the agreement, the Fionet platform has been deployed at Toronto Pearson to manage COVID-19 testing for airport employees and international departing passengers. Employee antigen testing commenced on March 8, 2021. The commercial terms of Fionet's deployment include a per-test charge.
The U.S. CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) announced an order requiring all air passengers arriving to the United States from a foreign country to get tested before their flight departs and to present the negative result to the airline before boarding the flight. Similar orders have been announced in multiple international destinations. The Fionet platform will enable meeting this requirement.
"Toronto Pearson's leadership is on local, national and international display in this program," said Dr. Michael Greenberg, chief executive officer of Fionet Rapid Response Group and Fio. "Working with such leaders and working for a mission with substantial impact on people's safety and on the economy excites our team every single day. What we are accomplishing here is scalable and can be made available in many other locations."
To provide professional health care staff to administer tests and operate diagnostic devices, FRR has entered into an agreement with OnPoint1 Health. For certain medical oversight of the project, FRR has entered into an agreement with Medevaq Inc.
The testing program utilizes Fionet's high-throughput testing solution, including multiple mobile point-of-need devices connected in real time to cloud data services, processing high quantities of rapid antigen tests per hour and capable of turning around test results within 20 minutes.
The Fionet platform will also manage passenger scheduling, rapid test processing, real-time result reporting, integration with LuminUltra PCR (polymerase chain reaction) devices, Response Biomedical antigen rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) and devices, Abbott Panbio antigen RDTs, and all corresponding data and messaging flows. The Fionet platform will enable easy passenger scheduling and registration from mobile phones followed by co-ordinated mass testing, while continuously capturing and securely transmitting test results, with full privacy protection.
"The entire team has been working incredibly hard this past week to operationalize this launch. We look forward to being a major contributor to pioneering the testing at Pearson and also to help pioneer the pandemic testing practices and protocols for airports around the globe," said Yoav Raiter, chief executive officer of Relay Medical.
With this project, FRR is well positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for mass-scale rapid COVID-19 testing solutions in industries that have been crippled by restrictions due to the pandemic. There is growing pressure to ramp up rapid testing capacity at places like airports, border crossings, cruise ships, arenas, workplaces and schools. This has become increasingly important with multiple reports of a new, faster-spreading COVID-19 variant making its way around the world.
About Relay Medical Corp.
Relay Medical is a technology developer and innovator headquartered in Toronto, Canada, focused on the development of novel technologies in the diagnostics and AI (artificial intelligence) data science sectors.