Ocyan, a company in the oil and gas industry, will contribute with approximately R$ 305,000 to expand the number of tests for the new Coronavirus in Macaé, Rio de Janeiro. The destination will be the “NUPEM UFRJ-Macaé Project”, managed by the COPPETEC Foundation, which will create a field hospital laboratory for testing and research for COVID-19. Currently, the UFRJ unit located in the North of the State performs, per day, up to 20 tests to identify the virus, equivalent to 400 tests per month. With the new laboratory, the expectation is to increase to up to 300 daily tests and, thus, reach 6,000 monthly tests and 42,000 samples by the end of the year. The field hospital laboratory will allow the reduction of the submission of tests to be performed in the capital of Rio de Janeiro, which is already overloaded.

The partnership is part of the actions foreseen in the Instrument of Commitment No. 06/2019 signed between Ocyan and the Public Ministry of Labor of Cabo Frio, which supports the project. The field hospital laboratory will remain a legacy of the pandemic and will be used for studies after the quarantine.

Macaé, with around 250,000 inhabitants, is one of the main centers of the country's oil and gas production services chain. Due to the large circulation of people from various regions of the country and the world, the municipality may undergo new epidemic waves of the new Coronavirus, after the relaxation of social isolation. As a result, the allocation of this Ocyan budget to increase testing will facilitate the control of the pandemic in the region.

Currently, the priority for testing the local health network is for healthcare professionals and critically ill patients admitted with suspected contamination. Thus, the diagnostics of COVID-19 take even longer because of the high demand, both in public and private laboratories, and may exceed up to 20 days. “Therefore, Ocyan's support in a testing and research laboratory in the Macaé region is extremely important”, comments Marco Aurélio Fonseca, Ocyan's director of Sustainability.

Preventive measures 

As far as the executive is concerned, the moment calls for strict sanitary surveillance and precaution and this scenario helps us think about the need for social improvement:

- The internal actions we have adopted follow the recommendations of WHO (World Health Organization), the Ministry of Health and Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (ANVISA), since our priority is the well-being and safety of our members and society. Our social concern is permanent and is also shown in other programs that we have with UFRJ-Macaé, for example, mainly related to education - he explains.

In the last months of the pandemic, Ocyan has been carrying out preventive actions to fight the new Coronavirus among its offshore (onboard) members who work on drilling rigs and FPSOs, in addition to the onshore (firm ground) team. The company performs daily tests on all employees before boarding. If the result is positive, the professional will remain on firm ground and under observation. If any employee already onboard presents symptoms, he / she is disembarked and sent for medical treatment. The use of masks on all vessels is mandatory and meetings are preferably held outdoors. The process of disinfecting the assets has already been deployed in a preventive manner and sanitation has been reinforced with the use of germicidal ultraviolet lamps, in addition to strict cleaning in the refrigeration system. Onshore teams have been working from home office since the beginning of social isolation.