London/Schlieren ZH – British company Coats is using textile technology from HeiQ, a startup from the Greater Zurich Area, to develop industrial yarns that protect against viruses. The textile technology is said to be among the first in the world that can effectively block COVID-19.

Coats and HeiQ

 

Coats, a global industrial thread company headquartered in the UK, has announced that it is using textile technology from the startup HeiQ to develop threads and yarns that can block viruses.

According to a press release, HeiQ Viroblock is among the first textile technologies in the world to be proven effective in laboratory testing against SARS-CoV-2, the virus from the coronavirus family that causes COVID-19. HeiQ Viroblock was shown to be 99.99% effective in 30 minutes in tests conducted with the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity located in Australia.

HeiQ Viroblock merges recycled microsilver technology to attact virus particles, which it then combines with vesicle technology to break down the virus membrane. The technology is non-toxic and hypoallergenic, making it suitable for textiles across a wide range of end-use products.

HeiQ was formed as a spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) in 2005. The company in headquartered in the IJZ, an innovation and startup park located in Schlieren.

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