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Exclusive | How Hong Kong coronavirus testing lab plans to help Cathay Pacific, other airlines revive international travel
- Testing ‘critical’ for more planes to take-off, Prenetics CEO says
- Public hospitals, private hospitals and private laboratories ‘will all need to be part of the solution’
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Hong Kong-based genetics testing company Prenetics is in talks with government officials and airlines, including Cathay Pacific, to help make travel safer and rev up economic activity.
The firm, which is testing English Premier League footballers for Covid-19, is turning to the airline industry to help figure out how to prevent second waves of infection stemming from imported cases of the novel coronavirus.
“Testing, testing, testing will be critical for travel to resume,” Danny Yeung, 41, co-founder and chief executive of Prenetics, said during an interview from his corner office overlooking Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour. “It’s scary, no one wants to fly,” he said. The company is the largest private laboratory in Hong Kong, in terms of testing capacity, with a maximum of 5,580 tests on a daily basis. It has more than 150 employees.
Only a handful of international routes are open globally, with passengers forced to spend weeks in quarantine at the end of most journeys. The collapse in air traffic has thrown the airline industry into crisis, pushing Virgin Australia into administration and triggering a US$13 billion emergency rights issue by Singapore Airlines.
Weaving together shared protocols could allow the free movement of people within “travel bubbles”. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania lifted travel restrictions between the Baltic states on May 15, while Australia and New Zealand are working towards cross-border flights. For Hong Kong, a travel bubble would do away with the 14-day quarantine on arrival in the city for travellers from within its limits.
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