Swallow Events Launches Industry First COVID-19 Rapid Testing Facility Service for UK Events
Swallow Events is the first company to offer a full rapid testing screening service facility to detect COVID-19 to event organisers throughout the UK and the rest of the world.
Partnering exclusively with the pharmaceutical company Roche, they are able to offer MHRA and CE approved rapid, 15 minute (99.68% specificity) turn-around pop-up testing facilities conducted by government-approved healthcare professionals on any size and scale. With the harsh reality facing events across the board, this is a well needed piece of good news that can enable events in all sectors to open safely. Falling in line with UK government guidelines Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
As one of the UK’s leading event catering management company and event & festival operations specialists, the team behind the testing service have vast experience managing all aspects of event infrastructure. Giving confidence to that mass demand the service will inevitably face, if it means the opening of events in a closer future than we first thought.
We briefly spoke to Swallow Event's Head of Logistics & Operations, Grego O’Halloran. Having spent nearly 20 years on the front lines of the electronic music sector, and working with industry heavyweights such as; Cream, Sonar, Defected, Mixmag, and Live Nation, Grego throws light upon his hopes for this service and what it really means for the road ahead.
"Like many this year I lost everything due to Covid: all my work, all my income, had no support, lost my home, had to leave Ibiza and my kids and it just wasn't enough for me to stand by and post things about #WeMakeEvents and #LetUsDance, which I did of course, but I wanted to actually do something, to find a solution to allow events to come back safely. I also knew that just waiting for government/legislation could take forever.
So we sourced the supply of the best kits on the market with the highest specificity and did a deal with Roche, the biggest pharmaceutical company in the world and our aim is simple, to bring back events by starting a movement from the ground up to make testing commonplace across events, thereby making obsolete the practices of social distancing and other covid safe measures and ultimately meaning testing becomes mandatory for events to operate and also is legally bound. If in the meantime, a vaccine changes things or home kits become widely available and can be used cheaply to make events viable like before, then great, the result is the same for us. Our objective will still have been achieved.
We are ahead of both the technology and legislation with this one and the first company in the world as far as we know providing this service, but ultimately it comes down to the fact that we want to help promoters, venues, artists, agents, managers, etc in using this solution to force and speed up change, so we can return to doing what we love and then we won't need to worry about further job losses and financial burden.
The NTIA announced earlier this week that UK Nightclubs face Extinction by the end of 2020, after facing many months with very little or in some cases no support from the UK Government since the beginning of the Pandemic. Alongside that statistic looming, Illegal raves are on rise across parts of the country, leading to prolonged restrictions on Venues and Event spaces, meaning this service couldn't come soon enough!
For more information head to www.swallowevents.com
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