The fund will be used to strengthen disease prevention measures against and restrict the spread of coronavirus
XAG announces special fund to combat contagious coronavirus. (Credit: CDC/ Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAM)
Chinese agriculture technology company XAG has announced a CNY5m ($720,476) special fund for drone disinfection operations to address the coronavirus outbreak.
The company’s special fund will be used for voluntary drone disinfection operations in the country, helping to strengthen disease prevention measures.
The fund will help offer technical support to XAG’s agricultural drone users to better conduct aerial disinfectant sprays
The fund will help provide technical support to the company’s agricultural drone users to better carry out aerial disinfectant sprays, helping to restrict the spread of the virus. It will focus more on rural villages with weaker health systems and poorer sanitation conditions.
XAG will conduct operations in the densely populated outdoor public places, as well as in the communities with confirmed or suspected cases of coronavirus.
The company will also focus more on the applications, including intensive cleaning and disinfection of medical and epidemic prevention vehicles moving between affected and unaffected areas.
XAG will provide all the spare parts and take responsibility for maintenance expenses of voluntarily engaged people during the nationwide drone disinfection operation.
To ensure safety and legitimacy, the company will also implement stringent qualification approval and standard operation procedure (SOP).
The coronavirus is primarily travelled through respiratory droplets and will also spread by touching contaminated surfaces, as per the Novel Coronavirus Treatment Proposal (Fourth Edition) published by the National Health Commission of China.
World Health Organisation (WHO)’s emergency committee member Dr Mara Van Kerkhove also confirmed that coronavirus may spread through fomites.
Agricultural drone serves as an autonomous precision spraying tool to precisely release disinfectants over public places.
XAG’s drone fleets have been deployed by a crop protection team on 28 January to disinfect a local community of more than 300,000m² within four hours in Shandong province of China.
XAG has expertise in the development of the unmanned aerial system (UAS), as well as six years of practical experience in field applications.
The firm, which has 42,000 agricultural drones in operation, provided 6.37 million farmers with precision crop protection services on 20 million hectares of farmland.
In October 2019, XAG and Bayer announced that they will develop a new drone-based technology for precision spraying to support smart agriculture in Japan.