Mineral Resources has become the first Australian resources company to roll out SaferMe’s innovative Bluetooth contact tracing technology across our sites and corporate offices.
With the Omicron variant of COVID-19 presenting challenges across the eastern states of Australia, we moved quickly to bolster our pandemic response to protect the health and wellbeing of our people, their families and local communities.
Contact tracing is essential to breaking the chains of COVID-19 transmission through the rapid isolation and care of cases, and quarantine of contacts. The introduction of wearable Bluetooth cards by our workforce and visitors automates the process, with each card detecting contact duration when one card comes into the range of another.
The system takes the guesswork out of contact tracing and will streamline the process of identifying close contacts and activating control measures if a positive case is detected at one of our sites or offices.
Automated contact tracing is just one element of our comprehensive COVID-19 Management Plan, which includes regular rapid antigen testing for our Perth metropolitan employees, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for our site-based workforce, and free face masks.
In support of the broader resources sector, we’ve made our PCR testing facilities available to more than 60 companies for the past 18 months.
MRL Chief Executive – Commodities, Paul Brown, said:
“MRL has developed a comprehensive management plan to define clear procedures and actions to prevent COVID-19 from entering our business and enable us to quickly and safely manage cases if it does.
“Contact tracing will be an essential part of our response should we detect a positive COVID-19 case, ensuring we can keep our people, their families and our communities safe, and our operations running.
“We’ve seen an extraordinarily positive response from our people to all the measures we’ve put in place to manage COVID-19 so far.
“I’m confident that when the borders are relaxed, our COVID-19 planning and preparations will ensure our workforce and business are well equipped to face the challenges ahead.”
SaferMe CEO Clint van Marrewijk said:
“Our customers are among the world’s leading companies – doing their best to protect the wellbeing of their employees and looking to ensure business continuity.
“Mineral Resources is a great example of this, and we’ve enjoyed partnering in this project.”
