Features
UK Company Launches Home Kits For Pre-Event COVID Testing
Willie B. Thomas – A man using a corona virus test to swab the inside of his nose.
It remains to be seen if governments decide that self-administered tests are sufficient for event access.
UK company Swallow Events announced a new home-testing kit that may be used to gain access to events, should the UK government include self-administered rapid tests in its requirements for proving a COVID-free status.
The test, which has a sensitivity of 97.1% and a specificity of 99.6%, is about to receive self-testing approval from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency in the UK as well as CE approval in Europe.
Pollstar was told approval should be granted within the next couple of weeks. Pricing starts from £8 ($11).
The company says it’s been in consultation with over 500 clients internationally regarding the use of rapid testing provisions for their forthcoming events/festivals, including Picnic Records, Campo Sancho Festival Access the Music Festival and more.
In the beginning of this year, Albania’s Unum Festival announced it would go ahead, June 3-7, at full capacity and without distancing mandates in place.
LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP via Getty Images – Asimina, a second grade high school student, holds her negative Covid-19 test result after undergoing self testing at her home in Athens, Greece, on the eve of high schools opening, April 11, 2021.
Students and teachers are required to use kits for self-administered coronavirus test twice a week as Greece reopens high schools for students in the final three grades.
The Albanian ministries for tourism, environment, and health approved the event on the condition that all guests are tested on and off site. Promoters around CEO Butrint Baholli are banking on Swallow Events’ on-site testing kit for that.
“We are delighted to be working with Swallow Events in conjunction with the Albanian government, to ensure that Unum Festival can take place in a safe and secure way for all our visitors. We will have testing on and off site at the festival and Swallow Events are working to provide us with the delivery plan,” Baholli said.
Swallow Events also signed an exclusive agreement with Yoti, a biometrics and blockchain identification testing platform, which has received over £85m in research and development and is used by the UK’s national health service NHS.
Each of the new home-testing kits will have a QR code which will link to this digital platform, so users can carry their health status around on their phone.
Said Oli Thomas, founder and managing director of Swallow Events: “With the constant shifting of sands regarding rules and regulations surrounding global event testing and most importantly, the UK government’s controversial health passports which are yet to be developed but are allegedly being trialed as part of the ‘Events Research Programme’.
“We decided to have all eventualities covered by not only offering the worlds first onsite Covid-19 testing service and consultancy for events in October 2020 but now we’re even more excited to announce the UK and Europe’s first CE approved commercial ‘at home, self-testing service linked to a user generated digital blockchain verification platform’ and therefore enabling pre-event, home testing for spaces like nightclubs, who do not necessarily have the space and infrastructure to facilitate on the door testing, through to large scale festivals, events, business conferences, stadia and even enabling an efficient and inexpensive way to the unlocking of air travel throughout the UK and Europe.”