Revolutionizing Pandemic Preparedness with Self-Collection

Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that pandemics can be incredibly disruptive to our society, economy, and daily lives. In order to be better prepared for future pandemics, the whole industry has invested in scaling up the production of everything that would be needed. However, this strategy cannot be left to the private sector alone. These investments must be maintained somehow, and some sort of continuous control is needed in order to detect weak signals and recognize new pandemics. This requires coordinated global intervention with rules and the flow of information to react in time to control risks. As a pre-analytic company, Copan is here to serve any need that could emerge, including creating safe, simple, and economically viable technological tools for decentralized diagnostic testing.

Self-Collection: A Game Changer

Self-collection has emerged as a game-changer in pandemic preparedness. By enabling people to collect their own samples, self-collection reduces the need for healthcare professionals to come into contact with potentially infected individuals. Copan’s line of self-collection kits includes the FLOQSwabs® for collecting upper respiratory samples. These self-collection kits enable people to collect their own samples in the comfort of their own homes or other safe environments, which can help control the spread of a virus.

Decentralized Testing: A New Frontier

Decentralized testing using self-collection is a new frontier in pandemic preparedness. By enabling people to collect their own samples, it reduces the need for people to gather in one place to get tested, which can minimize the spread of a virus. Decentralized testing also opens up new possibilities for creating safe, simple, and economically viable technological tools. 

Future Preparedness

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that we need to be better prepared for future pandemics. By investing in the production of everything that would be needed and creating a decentralized testing infrastructure, we can be better prepared to control and prevent pandemics in the future. Copan and Microbix are helping to lead the way in this transformation by developing safe, simple, and economically viable technological tools for self-collection and decentralized testing.

Microbix and Copan’s Solution

Combining Copan’s well-known FLOQ® brand with Microbix’s emerging PROCEEDx™ and REDx™ brands, the companies co-market leading-edge FLOQSwab-formatted QAPs. Twelve such FLOQ-based QAPs SKUs have already been created and introduced into various countries, and fully IVD-regulated REDxFLOQ controls are now available to support lab-based molecular-test workflows for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. With this collaboration, the two companies hope to improve lab testing accuracy worldwide, not just during the current pandemic, but for many decades to come.

Contact us to learn more about our FLOQ ® Swabs