Canadian-based medical equipment distribution company, The Stevens Company, is using its vast experience and international network of suppliers to play a key role in the Canadian fight against COVID-19.

With six distribution centres across the country, Stevens is currently fulfilling federal government contracts for hard surface cleaners, shoe covers and other items related to COVID-19, including special bags for the safe disposal of bio-hazardous material.

Stevens sells only to Canadian customers: governments, hospitals, physicians, care homes, and even veterinarians. Having those trusted, long-standing relationships in China, India, Australia, the United States and Canada gave the company a head start when pressure for more equipment began to intensify.

The Stevens warehouse hours have increased during the pandemic to accommodate an influx of extra orders for gloves, masks, gowns, alcohol and disinfectants.

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Several of the world’s ventilator manufacturers have formed a Ventilator Training Alliance (VTA) and partnered with Allego to create a mobile app that frontline medical providers can use to access a centralized repository of ventilator training resources.

Dräger, GE Healthcare, Getinge, Hamilton Medical, Medtronic, Nihon Kohden, and Philips have joined this humanitarian training coalition.

The VTA app — powered by learning and readiness platform provider Allego — connects respiratory therapists, nurses and other medical professionals with ventilator training resources from alliance member companies, including instructional how-to videos, manuals, troubleshooting guides, and other ventilator-operation expertise critical to helping responders treat patients suffering from COVID-19-related respiratory distress.

LifeSciences BC (LSBC) launched an integrated COVID-19 Response Program in March. In response to the challenges faced by the emerging and growing presence of COVID-19, stakeholders from across the Life Sciences community were coming forward to offer the assistance of products, services, supplies, etc. While these initiatives were representative of the commitment, generosity, and leadership of many within the sector, they were uncoordinated and ran the risk of not being effective.    

As a result, LSBC took on a leadership role to coordinate the activities on behalf of the broad Life Sciences stakeholder group. There were five COVID-19 Response workstreams to address gaps and excess capacity in various supply chains. The five workstreams represented the following areas: PPE & Products/Supplies, People & Services, Clinical Trials, Laboratories, and Manufacturers. The workstreams were led by leaders from the Life Sciences community.

Working with the CDL (Creative Destruction Labs), tools were developed to consolidate offers of needs and requests of assistance.   As the organization received offers and requests, they were recorded and handled through matching and redeployment or redirection to appropriate channels.

A collaboration platform (Slack Workspace) was also been set up to facilitate community engagement as well as expeditious communication and action.   

m-Health Solutions (mHS) in Hamilton, Ontario has been providing virtual and mobile cardiac diagnostics and monitoring since 2010. With COVID-19, m-Health Solutions quickly pivoted to meet the needs of doctors/clinics/hospitals and patients.

As holter departments in hospitals across Ontario closed, mHS established an on-line portal so that doctors virtually seeing patients from their homes could quickly and securely refer patients and receive reports back.

Devices were shipped directly to patients for a hook-up. Virtual assistance was provided by the mHS team. Hospitals quickly realized that the “walking well” patients coming to hospital for services has greatly changed. mHS has now established long-term contracts for continued virtual services with many hospitals in Ontario. CorHealth, in a March 31st memo, also recognized the need for alternative settings for cardiac diagnostics. They strongly encouraged that remote/home Electrocardiogram (ECG) Holter Monitoring applications should be used to support the detection of atrial fibrillation in stroke and transient ischaemic attack (TIA) patients. mHS was an organization that was identified that can provide this level of service.

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Roche’s new Elecsys® Anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody test now available in Canada is designed to help determine if a patient has been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and if the patient has developed antibodies against SARS-CoV-2.

Public Health, hospital and private laboratories are able to run the Elecsys® Anti-SARS-CoV-2 serology test on Roche’s cobas e analyzers, which are already widely available across Canada, and in each province. These fully automated systems can provide Anti-SARS-CoV-2 test results in approximately 18 minutes, with a test throughput of up to 300 tests/hour, depending on the analyzer.

This test is a complement to Roche’s existing molecular cobas® SARS-CoV-2 test, authorized under Health Canada’s Interim Order, which detects the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 with the company’s automated, high-throughput cobas 6800/8800 platforms. Roche also supplies other SARS-CoV-2 test solutions that are made available for lower volume testing on the MagNA Pure and LightCycler systems (Research Use Only) and the company continues to work on expanding its portfolio of COVID-19 test solutions. 

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BioNova is guiding east coast manufacturers through Health Canada’s process of regulatory approval. BioNova is part of a stakeholder advocacy group that’s providing companies with all the necessary documents to produce the PPE and has engaged a local regulatory consultant to make submissions to Health Canada.

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Getinge AB is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of medical ICU ventilators and other life-saving equipment. To address hospital ICU needs, spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization has increased ventilator production capacity, by 160% or 26,000 units. These ventilators are being deployed in ICUs around the world, including Canadian hospitals.

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On March 17th, Sonosite put up its COVID-19 web page, with a large number of instructional and educational videos specific to the assessment and management of COVID-19 patients.

A number of these videos are usually reserved for Sonosite customers only, but the company made them publicly accessible to help as many front-line clinicians as possible to manage COVID-19 more safely, effectively and efficiently with the use of Point-of-Care Ultrasound.

In addition, worldwide infectious disease control is an important consideration and Sonosite is taking this seriously. Given the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic, SonoSite will support our North American customers in this state of emergency by being able to utilize a wider range of cleaners and disinfectants, as long as they are hospital-grade and are on the U.S. EPA’s List N: Disinfectants for Use Against SARS-CoV-2. 

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Baxter’s Alliston manufacturing plant supplies the majority of IV and dialysis products to the Canadian health care system. In response to COVID-19, the company transitioned to a 24/7 production schedule to supply about 130 per cent capacity, seeking to supply as many IV bags as possible.

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Since January, 3M have doubled its global output of N95 and other respirators to more than one billion per year, and the company is on track to deliver two billion respirators by the end of 2020.  However, the company recognized the need to increase the availability of N95 respirators here in Canada. 

On August 21, in collaboration with the Canadian and Ontario governments, 3M Canada announced that it will begin manufacturing N95 respirators in Brockville, Ontario. This will help ensure Canada’s self-sufficiency for this critical product for years to come.  

When the expansion will be fully operational by 2021, 3M will continue working with the government and health agencies to get the N95 respirators into the hands of those who need them most - healthcare workers, first responders, and those in critical infrastructure roles. 

The expansion will help to ensure a consistent domestic supply of this critical personal protective equipment (PPE) for the foreseeable future. 

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