Company brings COVID-19 testing aboard boats to help prevent outbreaks at sea

A Seattle company is working to help boats and ships avoid COVID-19 outbreaks at sea and keep the maritime tourism industry safe.

Atlas Genomics, a clinical testing lab in the Salmon Bay Marina business complex, has completely changed the services they provide after the coronavirus pandemic.

They used to mostly run tests related to women’s health. Now the company goes onboard vessels and to test people for coronavirus.

One unique part of the testing they run, is they come to you -- whether you’re at a nursing home or on a boat.

“A lot of the of time they’ll be quarantined on their vessels. We’ll have them step onto the dock, or we’ll go on the vessel and collect the samples,” said Rob Rovig, general manager of Atlas Genomics.

Without a recent negative COVID test, anyone visiting Alaska must quarantine for two weeks.

But the yacht tourism industry is avoiding any lost time by having the company test crews for COVID on board in Seattle.

Rovig said they’ll often do two rounds of testing for the crew of a vessel – once when they dock before the crew gets off the yacht, to clear them for going into Seattle for restocking provisions, and once before they depart for Alaska.

Pacific Yacht Management is one of the companies that hired Atlas Genomics to do testing. She said they tried to get testing through King County but the turnaround time for test results weren’t fast enough.

“They (Atlas) don’t require COVID symptoms to get a test, they come down to the boat, they test the crew, and then the crew pulls the lines and they start traveling to Alaska. So by the time the crew gets to Alaska, they have their results,” said Monique Webber, operations manager at Pacific Yacht Management.

She said the trip to Alaska takes four days, and they usually get test results within 24 hours. If there was a positive test, it would mean the crew would need to turn back and likely need to isolate on board or at home. But so far, there have been no positive tests for their yacht crews.

COVID outbreaks have been a major problem at sea – from cruise ships to fishing vessels.

The American Dynasty commercial fishing vessel had at least 86 crew members test positive for COVID and was diverted back to Seattle from Alaska in early June, according to parent company American Seafoods.

Having on-board COVID tests available can help bring safety and peace of mind for local tourism in Washington too.

Webber said charter trips to the San Juan Island and other islands were up.

“A 165-foot boat is worth about $180,000 a week to the Washington State economy. So that’s money that people desperately need in their businesses right now,” Webber said.

Atlas Genomics can run about 1,000 tests peer day and said it’s working to expand their testing capabilities by ten-fold by the end of summer to meet the demand.

Cox Media Group