Battle of Omicron variants: Canadian company’s new air decontamination device aims to help control the spread

The battle for the Omicron variant is in full swing right now, and a tech company in Alberta, Canada is looking to bring new technologies to help control its spread.

The aforementioned technology, according to Global News Canada, is an air decontamination device called the HydroxylizAire. Designed to be attached to a furnace in a typical home, it circulates air through a chamber where it would be heated by a 50C jam and exposed to UVC radiation.

With this process, the machine seeks to create a chemical reaction that purifies the air by destroying pathogens instead of simply containing them.

The company that made the machine is called Ti-DOX. Company president Dean Neitz touts the capabilities of their device, saying it will purify the air using a “natural process”.

Neitz also hopes their technology will help continuously improve the overall air quality inside buildings.

Ti-DOX says that the idea for the machine was actually born ten years ago, but is only appearing now. It was built with the purpose of purifying indoor air which they say contains up to five times more contaminants than outdoor air.

Despite all of this, however, the machine hasn’t actually been tested against COVID-19, let alone the Omicron variant which is currently wreaking havoc around the world.

However, emergency physician Dr. Joe Vipond of the University of Calgary says recognizing the importance of air purification is more urgent than ever, given that the pandemic is “suspended in the air.” ‘air from the start,’ according to the original Global News report.

The Omicron variant of the coronavirus is now making headlines after Delta, and it’s pushing world leaders — even Big Tech billionaire Bill Gates — to focus their efforts on containing its spread and promoting the use of vaccines.

Read also : COVID exposure notifications less used despite Omicron variant in country; Do you need it?

Omicron variant: what you need to know

If there’s one thing you need to know about Omicron, it’s that it spreads much faster than almost any other COVID-19 variant before it. It has also been observed to be “highly transmissible” even in fully vaccinated adults, according to NPR.org.

It is this situation that has scientists and health experts around the world scrambling to find answers. But while they work tirelessly behind the scenes, the variant works on its own, with its inner workings so far unknown due to a lack of data, according to the CDC.

(Photo: Photo by ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP via Getty Images)
A glass sculpture titled ‘coronavirus COVID-19’ created by British artist Luke Jerram is seen at his studio in Bristol, south west England, March 17, 2020. – Jerram created a coronavirus glass sculpture COVID-19 in tribute to the enormous scientific and medical efforts to fight the pandemic. Made of glass, at 23cm in diameter, it is 1 million times larger than the actual virus.

There are, however, a few guesses as to why Omicron appears to be spreading so quickly. As shown by data from HKUMed (via University of Hong Kong) it appears to multiply 70 times faster in the human respiratory tract than Delta, in as little as 48 hours after infection.

But generally, these researchers have found that Omicron is about four times more infectious than the OG coronavirus, and about twice as infectious as Delta has ever been, reports NPR.org.

Additionally, Omicron also proved to be more airborne, reports CTV News Calgary-hence the Ti-DOX air purifier.

Related article: COVID-19 Omicron: partial protection of Pfizer antibodies on the variant, first study reports

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Written by RJ Pierce

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