The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has meant that there has been a ma­jor drop in eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and there is con­cern that the virus could spread when peo­ple are in close prox­im­i­ty.

This has prompt­ed mea­sures like the ro­ta­tion of the pub­lic ser­vice, the clos­ing of schools and pub­lic trans­porta­tion at re­duced ca­pac­i­ty.

The CEO of Joint Med­ical Prod­ucts Caribbean Ltd Al­fred Lou­saing be­lieves his com­pa­ny has what is nec­es­sary to re­turn some lev­el of nor­mal­cy by in­creas­ing safe­ty through the use of Far UVC (ul­tra­vi­o­let C) light to en­hance ser­vice and of­fer­ings in­clud­ing to be used as a tourism mar­ket­ing tool and to help restart schools in an era of COVID-19.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian Lou­saing in­di­cat­ed that his com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly do­ing work in coun­tries like Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos, where, “that’s go­ing to be part of their mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy go­ing out in their doc­u­men­ta­tion for tourism—that “all of our rooms are UV pro­tect­ed,” and peo­ple know about UV all over the world.”

For an in­vest­ment of $15,000 to $20,000 per unit, Lou­saing not­ed that a com­pa­ny can have the as­sur­ance, based on sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence that the Far UVC light (that in­stalls like a smoke de­tec­tor) will sani­tise and ster­ilise all sur­faces and the air in a space rang­ing from 50 to 100 square feet.

Lou­saing ad­mit­ted, “I am not sell­ing a mask or a pair of gloves or a Lysol kit. I am sell­ing a prod­uct to, in ac­tu­al fact, con­tin­u­ous­ly stop the virus in its tracks for both air­borne and hard sur­faces.”

When asked the ques­tion of why some­one would pur­chase a $15,000 light as op­posed to $100 bot­tle of Lysol or any oth­er brand, he said “be­cause it’s con­tin­u­ous de­struc­tion of the COVID-19 virus.”

Lou­saing said that canned sani­tis­ers will on­ly work when it is sprayed. He added that the rea­son why he has part­nered and signed con­tracts with two in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies (one of them be­ing Gen­er­al Elec­tric) is to cater for mis­takes that peo­ple make.

He ar­tic­u­lat­ed, “The ob­jec­tive of this de­vel­op­ment is be­cause of hu­man er­ror. This is why all the tech­nol­o­gy is de­vel­op­ing con­sis­tent­ly. The fu­ture of the world is go­ing to be tech­nol­o­gy.”

Lou­saing said that fu­ture would not be com­prised of peo­ple us­ing canned sani­tis­ers to give con­fi­dence that 100 per cent of a space is clean be­cause there are on­ly “so many places that one can spray.

He gave the ex­am­ple of go­ing to use an ATM ma­chine. The user of the ATM does not see any­one in the space there spray­ing or fog­ging the area be­fore it is used. The user al­so does not know if the per­son in front of them or the per­son that used the ma­chine be­fore had COVID-19 or not.

“But they have just used the ma­chine in front of you, that you have gone and put your card in, in­no­cent­ly not know­ing any­thing and you get COVID-19 now, be­cause they had it on their hands or wher­ev­er,” said Lou­saing.

The bot­tom line of UV ster­il­i­sa­tion, Lou­saing said is that its pro­tects the in­hab­i­tants of the space in which it is in­stalled, 24/7. He not­ed, “So every sur­face in there is be­ing ster­ilised at all times.”

Lou­saing said his com­pa­ny has just start­ed its mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy to work with the banks. The com­pa­ny, he said is in­stalling the Far UVC lights right now in el­e­va­tors.

Ac­cord­ing to Lou­saing, the oth­er Far UVC com­pa­ny that he has part­nered with has just signed con­tracts with the US army, and they al­so have US Uni­ver­si­ties us­ing their prod­ucts lines now as prepa­ra­tions are be­ing made for schools to re­open.

With re­gard to lo­cal ed­u­ca­tion, Lou­saing in­di­cat­ed that he is cur­rent­ly in talks with the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny (MTS) team to pre­pare to in­stall these de­vices in ed­u­ca­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties in T&T.

Lou­saing ex­pressed that his com­pa­ny has just sent the doc­u­men­ta­tion to the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion’s COVID-19 com­mit­tee. He said, “We are hop­ing that good sense would pre­vail but as I told the Min­is­ter, once you are in­ter­est­ed in any­thing, you don’t have to sign a PO (pur­chase or­der).”

He added, “I don’t want you to sign a PO to say that you are com­mit­ted. I want you to do a let­ter on your let­ter head, and say that the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is in­ter­est­ed in the UV lights and these are the quan­ti­ty of schools and these are the plans of the roll out. I said I will get the fi­nance for you if that’s the is­sue be­cause IMF and World Bank and every­body else has par­tic­u­lar funds, sit­ting for ed­u­ca­tion.”

Lou­saing al­so dis­closed that his com­pa­ny sells UVC ro­bots, an au­to­mat­ed unit that will sani­tise spaces with­out the pres­ence of hu­mans, as the pow­er of the UVC in these ma­chines can be dam­ag­ing to an in­di­vid­ual’s health.

These UVC High ma­chines are man­u­fac­tured in Bel­gium, Lou­saing said and the sell for €78,000. Ac­cord­ing to Lou­saing, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has cre­at­ed a num­ber of chal­lenges for the world to say the least.

He ad­mit­ted that there is no doubt that so­cial dis­tanc­ing, fre­quent hand wash­ing, and mask wear­ing de­creas­es the risk of trans­mis­sion of the virus.