June 5, 2020 – A Coronavirus Update from Kevin Graney

You are currently viewing June 5, 2020 – A Coronavirus Update from Kevin Graney

Hi everyone. Today is Friday, June 5th. (Click here for podcast.)

We’ve had one additional positive case of COVID-19 since my last podcast on Friday, May 29th. The individual works in department 921 in the High Bay building at Quonset Point. Their last day of work was April 29th, and they were tested on May 20th. Our total number of positive cases since the pandemic began is 48, with 44 employees returned to work.

Today I’d like to give you an update about our ongoing COVID-19 testing efforts. Our goal with testing from the beginning has been to provide you with health information that we hoped would be useful to you, and help us, as a company, ensure our collective safety.

As you know, we’ve been conducting three types of testing – antigen, antibody and temperature screening. The antigen test is the nasal swab that determines whether a person has active COVID-19 virus. As Dr. Hurley mentioned last week, the antigen test is considered quite accurate by the medical community. The antibody test is the blood prick screening designed to indicate whether someone has developed antibodies for COVID. If someone screens positive for antibodies using this tool, we follow-up with a confirmatory blood draw, which is the gold standard for confirming antibodies. The FLIR thermal screening we’ve been piloting this week in Groton quickly identifies whether someone has an elevated temperature. Anyone flagging a temperature higher than 100.4 by the FLIR camera is further screened by our medical staff to determine if they are at risk for COVID. While a few folks exceeded the temperature threshold using the FLIR camera, no one had an actual fever, which is great news.

So overall, up to this point, between Groton and Quonset Point, we’ve tested approximately 7,200 employees with a combination of these tools.

We find ourselves in the midst of a rapidly changing environment when it comes to COVID-19 testing. The antibody screening tests are new and have varying degrees of effectiveness. To quickly ramp up testing throughout the country at the start of the pandemic, the FDA initially allowed medical device companies to bring antibody screening tests to market under what’s known as an Emergency Use Authorization.

The results we’ve seen from these antibody tests have not proved as useful as we had hoped. We first saw mixed results in the antibody tests used in Groton. Because of that, we procured tests from a different lab for our Quonset Point screening. Unfortunately, the tests from the second lab also had a high margin of error, with a large percentage of false positive results, based on follow-up blood testing. So in other words, while you may have screened positive using one of these antibody tests, the actual blood draw indicated you were, in fact, negative.

As we gear up to begin testing in New London on June 15th, we’re considering whether or not to try an antibody test from a third company or whether it makes more sense to offer employees the one test that we’re confident in: the antigen nasal swab. I’ll keep you posted on our decision as we get closer to the June 15th testing in New London.

I think the positive message we can all take from our testing results is that we’re doing the right things to keep COVID-19 in check, but we need to remain vigilant on the basics. It is our requirement that all employees wear a face covering while at work and maintain a safe distance of 6-feet or more from each other. Wash your hands with soap and water and use hand sanitizer. Above all, if you don’t feel well, please stay home.

Thanks for listening,

Kevin

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