A private company that played a leading role in eradicating COVID-19 in New Zealand has opened an office in Texas, and is sharing some key learnings about stopping the spread.
In order to eradicate the coronavirus in the United States, many experts say our system of contact tracing must become more robust.
If leaders want the public to trust and engage with the process, one New Zealander says they need to get rid of the word “tracing.”
It’s become poison here in the U.S., implying “big brother,” that the government is watching.
Instead, SaferMe CEO Cint Van Marrewijk, said we should be calling it contact “logging.”
“You do not have to track where someone goes,” Van Marrewijk said on Y’all-itics. “It’s all about logging the interaction between two people and then making sure that you can respond quickly and protect people.”
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SaferMe is based in New Zealand and is focused on businesses.
At the start of the pandemic, the New Zealand government started providing SaferMe’s product free to all businesses in the country.
Its tracing system played a large role in helping the country essentially eradicate the disease.
"If you get sick, imagine trying to remember all the people you’ve met with over the last four or five days,” Marrewijk said. "It’s easy to forget someone and if you’re coming into the office, you want to know there's a professional system is in place and if someone gets sick, the right people are being isolated quickly."
The technology works just like a key or swipe card you likely already use.
Marrewijk said the amount of data needed to do an efficient job isn’t that much, usually nothing more than which rooms or areas you might have visited.
And he says all of that data is encrypted.
“So, if you were to lose the card, it’s a useless piece of equipment to anyone who’s trying to figure out what data is on there.”
And Marrewijk says all around the world, tracing is one of the main tools for combatting the virus.
SaferMe is in 30 countries, now including the United States, generally, and Austin, Texas, in particular.
He visited several other cities.
Marrewijk said the culture, the more rural feel and the barbecue all just clicked.
“We went to a number of other cities and then when I saw Austin, Texas, I thought, 'oh yeah, this is the one,'” Marrewijk said. “When I get off the plane, the first place I go is Cooper’s.”
The Jasons actually had a chance to see into the future during this podcast.
New Zealand is 19 hours ahead of us here in Texas, so it was tomorrow there.
The CEO joined us from Wellington with a cup of what he called “plunger coffee.”
But if he were to have a good old-fashioned New Zealand brew, he recommended “Yeastie Boys” or “Garage Project.”
As for his company, it originally started with a product designed to keep employees from entering dangerous places. It would sound a proximity alarm and warn you to stop.
Marrewijk said it wasn’t terribly difficult to turn their attention to contact tracing.
And he said tracing, testing and a robust quarantine system have been the keys to New Zealand’s success in dealing with the pandemic.
“When you arrive, you actually have to go straight to a hotel, a little bit like when the NBA set up their bubble,” he said. “You have to come into a hotel and stay there for 14 days, then you can come into the country. And so, most of the cases, which are happening all of the time in New Zealand, are actually inside isolation.”
