Citigroup has begun offering some of its US employees who are still working at offices and branches a rapid at-home Covid test. The company says its aim is to spot early Covid cases and thus prevent the spread of the infection among its employees.
Those given a change to participate in the home testing programme include employees in Citi’s Chicago area branches and those working on its trading floors in New York.
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Citigroup plans to make at-home testing widely available to more employees in the coming months to enhance workplace health and safety, says the company’s medical director Dr. Lori Zimmerman.
The plan is to eventually extent this initial pilot programme into a larger at-home testing scheme for a back-to-office strategy.
The test
A spokeswoman for Citi says employees had been previously using a combination of health-screening and molecular tests on site or at home.
Currently, Citi is using a rapid-antigen test created by Innova Medical Group that has been authorised for use in the UK and the European Union. It is pending emergency-use authorisation with the US Food and Drug Administration.
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By GlobalDataThe test uses a nasal swab, takes about 20 minutes and is 96% accurate, according to Innova. Meanwhile, it is paired with a health-assessment app by LivePerson. Participation in the program is voluntary for Citi employees.
The push to get back to the office
Many US companies are doing regular, sometimes daily, testing to try to safely get employees back to the office before vaccines are widely available.
Goldman Sachs, Netflix, Delta and others are using CVS’s corporate-concierge program, with on-site tests that give results in minutes.
In New York, the state is rolling out rapid-testing sites to help get workers back to the office, entertainment venues and restaurants.
JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon has said his bank will not force its employees to get Covid-19 vaccinations as a pre-condition for returning to the office.
“You certainly can’t make it mandatory until it’s fully accessible, so that question can’t even be answered before June. However, I do think we may see some companies do it. I could see an airline doing it or a hotel company doing it.”
Dimon favours a “Carrots and sticks” approach. “We want people to take it, I think it’s a far better thing,” he said.
