Blink President Pens Letter to Biden Administration in Support of Ongoing COVID Testing
Blink Science President Eric Doherty sent a letter to President Biden yesterday in the wake of the announcement that a fourth wave of the coronavirus is taking hold in the US. “Despite extraordinary efforts to get vaccinations into the arms of our citizens, a fourth wave of coronavirus infections has begun, with the CDC reporting an average of 65,000 new cases in the last seven days. Vaccinations are giving many of our states’ governors and their citizens a false sense of security as mask mandates are being eliminated and venues are filling up with untested, unvaccinated people,” wrote Doherty.
This comes as the Washington Post reported that the Biden administration has advocated for a stronger role in coordinating the efforts of vaccination passport development. Blink Science, which has partnered with IBM Watson Health on the development of their passport and verification system, blinkPASSPORT™ and blinkVERIFY™, announced last week that they have joined 80 other companies and organizations as members of the Good Health Pass Collaborative to jointly articulate principles and develop technical standards for digital health pass systems that are privacy-protecting, user-controlled, equitable, and interoperable.
But Doherty claims that vaccinations and vaccination passports are not enough to ensure a safe reopening of the global economy. “Even among the vaccinated, there are still questions about their effectiveness against the spread of variants, whether booster shots will be needed, and how long immunity may last. Unless the world’s population is universally vaccinated, and vaccines prove to be 100 percent effective, neither of which will happen, we will continue to need quick, reliable testing.” He added, “We are concerned, particularly considering this fourth wave of the virus, that attention to and investment in testing has waned during the vaccine rollout.”
Blink Science is working to bring to market the first instant COVID test, making fast, accurate and inexpensive testing available everywhere.
Doherty concluded, “we believe our instant testing and passport technologies can go a long way to solving the current pandemic and preventing the next one. We encourage your administration to include in the coronavirus response, a focus on shared testing data and universally available instant tests, in addition to your support for the development of health passports.” Download the original letter in PDFDOWNLOAD
Read the full text of the letter below.
March 31, 2021
Eric Doherty, President
Blink Science, Inc.
9143 Philips Highway, STE 390
Jacksonville, FL 32256
President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. President
Thank you for your focus and determination to bring an end to the COVID-19 pandemic. At Blink Science, we share your commitment to saving lives and helping, not only the United States, but the world, get back to the normal way of living. We are one of many organizations working to develop solutions that will allow everyone to resume public life and restart the global economy.
Despite extraordinary efforts to get vaccinations into the arms of our citizens, a fourth wave of coronavirus infections has begun, with the CDC reporting an average of 65,000 new cases in the last seven days. Vaccinations are giving many of our states’ governors and their citizens a false sense of security as mask mandates are being eliminated and venues are filling up with untested, unvaccinated people.
We applaud your appointment of Jeff Zients as White House Coronavirus Coordinator and the coordinated effort to explore the role of technology in safely reopening the economy. In a recent public briefing, Mr. Zients spoke of your administration’s role in the development and rollout of vaccine passports. He stated, “our role is to help ensure that any solutions in this area should be simple, free, open source, accessible to people, both digitally and on paper, and designed from the start to protect people’s privacy.” We fully support this goal, which is why we have joined with more than 80 companies and organizations in the Good Health Pass Collaborative to jointly articulate principles and develop technical standards for digital health pass systems that are privacy-protecting, user-controlled, equitable, and interoperable.
Blink Science has recently partnered with IBM Watson Health to bring vaccination and testing data safely and privately into our passport and verification system using their blockchain health data infrastructure. This will allow individuals access to their data and organizations the ability to verify that data with a simple scan. Our system will be free, private, and safe.
Evidence suggests that vaccinations and vaccine passports alone will not end the pandemic and will not ensure the safety of our population. Many are hesitant to get vaccinated and others may be skeptical about the use of vaccination passports. Just this week, the Governor of Florida announced his intent to ban businesses from requiring their customers to show proof of vaccination.
Even among the vaccinated, there are still questions about their effectiveness against the spread of variants, whether booster shots will be needed, and how long immunity may last. Unless the world’s population is universally vaccinated, and vaccines prove to be 100 percent effective, neither of which will happen, we will continue to need quick, reliable testing.
We are concerned, particularly considering this fourth wave of the virus, that attention to and investment in testing has waned during the vaccine rollout. On March 2, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology led a COVID-19 Vaccine Credentials Discussion with the Federal Health IT Coordinating Council. In their presentation, they supported a focus on vaccine passports, rather than testing data, because “it’s very difficult to develop practical mechanisms for a universally acceptable representation of test results because test administration is highly fragmented and testing quality is highly variable. Proof of COVID health status thus remains a localized activity.” Blink Science is working to bring to market the first instant COVID test, making fast, accurate and inexpensive testing available everywhere.
Our patented technology in the blinkTEST™ system will provide instant COVID test results using saliva in a point-of-care (POC) environment. Our technology uses a small test strip, like a blood glucose test, and a low-cost hand-held device that works like a simplified blood glucose meter that will display a simple positive or negative result, instantly. Imagine a major sports venue or office building with the ability to test every person entering their facilities in seconds, guaranteeing that all guests are COVID free. Testing data can be shared confidentially and securely in our electronic health records (EHR) cloud and shared with any interoperable health passport in the world; thus solving the problem of low-cost, accurate, widespread testing.
Our blink testing platform will be able to produce nearly 50 Million test strips a day; produce more than 500,000 blinkTEST device readers to saturate the United States and help with testing; and we will have the ability to ship our tests out globally, using the world’s largest logistics organization.
We are currently in negotiations to conduct clinical trials for blinkTEST with university, laboratory, and hospital partners, followed by submittals for FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in the U.S., CE certification from the EU, and approval from Health Canada. In addition to COVID-19, we are also preparing to gain approval for tests of COVID/Flu, troponin (a heart attack marker) and sepsis. In fact, we have more than 50 testing analytes that we hope to bring to market within the next two to three years, including instant test results for strep, flu, STDs, tuberculosis, malaria, and many cancers, not to mention other applications for instant-result testing such as food safety and water quality.
We believe our instant testing and passport technologies can go a long way to solving the current pandemic and preventing the next one. We encourage your administration to include in the coronavirus response, a focus on shared testing data and universally available instant tests, in addition to your support for the development of health passports. We are at the ready to lend our expertise to your efforts.
Respectfully,
Eric Doherty
President, Blink Science, Inc.