Innovative drone delivery company, Zipline, has made its debut drone delivery in America six months ahead of schedule.
The company had planned to commence its service in the US, North Carolina to be precise, in October 2020, under an agreement signed at the beginning of this year with Novant Health, which runs fifteen hospitals and nearly 700 clinics in the area.
It heralded its debut flight on American soil with a flight from a field in Kannapolis, North Carolina, where a six-foot long, red-and-white drone flew fifteen miles west over suburban Charlotte to Novant Health’s Huntersville Medical Center. The 30 minute flight, which is the the longest commercial drone delivery route in the country, was to drop a box of protective masks in a designated spot next to the parking lot.
Zipline says it had to accelerate its plans after the Coronavirus outbreak. “It was very much a toe in the water sort of thing,” said Angela Yochem, chief digital and technology officer at Novant, “Then this crisis hit.”
Zipline, though an American company, began drone deliveries in Rwanda in 2016. The Government of Rwanda has since expanded the program across the country, making more than 13,000 deliveries to date. Zipline drones now deliver more than 65% of Rwanda’s blood supply outside of the capital, Kigali.
It launched its service in Ghana where its drones serve up to 2,000 health facilities and 12 million people in Ghana.
In April 2020, the Ghanaian government partnered with Zipline, to make use of delivery drones for COVID-19 test in rural areas. This new move was aimed at speeding up the testing process outside major cities in the country. It conducted its first coronavirus test flight on the 1st of April 2020 and It is now flying samples collected from more than 1,000 health facilities in rural areas to labs in the country’s capital Accra and Kumasi, its second-largest city.
Though Zipline currrently provides masks and other protective equipment to Novant’s hospital in Huntersville USA and to a nearby doctors’ office, its aim is to be able to deliver COVID-19 treatments or, eventually, a vaccine. Zipline and Novant are also working with the Federal Aviation Administration for approval to deliver medicine and supplies directly to patients.
