Upstate Medical to test NYPA’s essential utility workers for COVID-19

The testing program will use Upstate Medical’s Clarifi COVID-19 saliva test. That saliva test was “recently ranked number one by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration for being the most sensitive saliva test and detecting the virus in its earliest stages and sixth globally among all COVID-19 tests,” SUNY noted.

As part of the agreement, SUNY will provide NYPA with the capability to regularly test NYPA’s essential employees — including power generation and transmission staff — in locations within communities showing a COVID-19 positivity rate of 7.5 percent or higher.

Testing is currently taking place at NYPA’s Niagara Power Plant in Lewiston in Niagara County, north of Buffalo. The NYPA essential employee testing program is SUNY’s most recent partnership to test more of New York’s essential workers and follows a similar program for Albany International Airport announced in the beginning of the month.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have been looking at resources differently in order to protect our students, faculty, and staff from this health crisis, and in doing so, SUNY and Upstate Medical [have] been able to expand capacity to test more essential workers for COVID at its earliest stages when individuals are asymptomatic,” Malatras said. “Upstate’s saliva test is ranked highly because it can detect trace amounts of the virus, and it has a quick turnaround within 48 hours and is cost effective. We are pleased to work with President Quiniones to offer this test to the employees of NYPA, who are critical to our state, especially now in winter, as power for heat is needed across the state and as we continue to arm our hospitals to fight against COVID. I also want to thank President Dewan and his staff at Upstate Medical for all they are doing to expand the positive impact that SUNY’s academic medicine sector has had on managing the pandemic through research, testing, and excellent patient care.”

NYPA is described as an essential service operator that generates approximately 25 percent of the state’s power and owns and operates approximately one-third of New York’s transmission system.

It will use the COVID-19 test on generation and transmission staff at “key locations” across the state. NYPA’s initial sites include the Niagara Power Project in Western New York; transmission control sites in Oneida County; and the Blenheim-Gilboa Pumped Storage Power Project in Schoharie County.

NYPA may add other sites “as COVID conditions warrant,” per the SUNY news release.