ATP Testing & Sanitation – Rising Importance Like Never Before
Multidrug-resistant microorganisms and the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic have raised public awareness of the need to control the spread of infectious diseases. We have been asked can ATP testing, which is dominant in non-clinical environment testing (such as nutraceuticals, food, cosmetics & toiletries), be relevant for Hospitals and Clinics use. The answer is yes as this is for environmental surfaces.
It is becoming ever more important that healthcare professionals and public services monitor the effectiveness of cleaning and disinfection procedures used in hospitals, medical establishments and high touch point surfaces in public places. Recent studies by the NIH (National Institutes of Health) showed that viable viruses can be detected on surfaces after 2-3 days.
Medical institutions must meet hospital hygiene standards for pathogen monitoring and infection prevention. Operational hygiene teams or infection control officers are responsible for verifying that cleaning procedures are properly implemented, followed, and continue to be proven effective. Visual inspection of cleanliness and counting aerobic colonies on petri dishes are also useful screening methods, but if done on their own, are ineffective and impractical respectively. More and more healthcare institutions are looking for a monitoring solution that delivers a fast and quantitative indication of surface cleanliness.
ATP as a proxy for cleaning efficiency
The MVP ICON® is a quick and easy-to-use system to verify the effectiveness of cleaning and disinfection procedures on a routine basis. The system is intended to measure the amount of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in samples from cleaned surfaces, thereby providing a quantifiable indication of cleaning effectiveness and adequate removal of environmental, even if viruses like SARS-CoV-2 are not directly detected.
Results are obtained in 18 seconds and automatically stored for subsequent evaluation. The proven MVP ICON® system is used by thousands of lab technicians and microbiologists around the globe.
MVP Icon®: A fast and easy way to monitor the effectiveness of cleaning and disinfection procedures
Virus transport medium and rapid detection methods
A lot of suppliers are significantly increasing their manufacturing capacities because of the COVID-19 pandemic situation. Rapid technologies can help to release such products to the market as early as possible. The Milliflex Quantum® system or the EZ-Fluo® system can reduce the time needed for microbial contamination tests to 1/3rd of the time for traditional methods, allowing urgently needed supplies to reach the fields (medial, hospitals, labs) faster.
In many countries, a lot of COVID-19 testing has been performed. This has led to a global shortage of viral transport media. A smart way to overcome this is to produce your own media as recommended by the WHO. We can provide you with all the components needed to produce virus transportation media for use in collecting throat and nasal swabs.
