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“I want that car. Buy it and if you can’t find it I steal in Padua.” It sounded more or less like a joke from a top executive in an Italian region to his staff. He was talking about super pipettor that made it possible to fly swab analysis for the diagnosis of the new coronavirus in Veneto. Everyone wants it, everyone wants it. Made in California, now it is scarce, «For the blocking of technologies considered strategically sought by Triumph», In a United States facing the Covid-19 pandemic. The machine has become “a myth that feeds itself. Officials and managers of hospitals in different regions, from north to south, requested information from the lucky ones who managed to obtain it, that is, the university hospital in Padua.
IN DEEP
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Coronavirus, reinfection. Ministry report: «Veneto with low risk»
General manager Luciano Flor told the story. The intuition of being able to use it to eliminate the bottleneck that slows down the swab analysis process was born here, by virologist Andrea Crisanti. Those were the darkest days of the Sars-CoV-2 epidemic in Italy. «I remember asking him: but isn’t there a revolutionary way that allows us to make more tampons? At that time, we tested 1,200-1,300. He asked around, then remembered this machine that was used to pipette anything, not viruses, at Imperial University in London. “The idea convinced me, he continues, and I told him to ask for a budget, which then arrived on Friday the 20th March. On Monday the 23rd the order began, on the 26th we had it in the hospital ». It was, says Flor, “a stroke of luck. The car came to us from Holland. It was a demonstration, new and fully functional. It probably would not have happened if we had to wait for it directly from the factory. Now, to my knowledge, nobody can buy it. We took a few days, also working on Saturdays and Sundays, for calibration and on Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week it started working.
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Specific flower: «The supercar is only a stage. To achieve the result of maximizing the power of swab analysis, a powerful laboratory organization is required. Of course, the same quantities guaranteed today by an instrument that occupies 60 centimeters on a counter would have required 20 linear meters of machines with previous technologies. The superpower? “Traveling at a rate of 750 thousand pipettes in 24 hours,” calculates Flor. The brochure featuring the machine enhances its ability to “accelerate the life of scientific research.” Obviously, the feat revealed by Covid-19 is not mentioned. The difference is made by the way the liquid is handled: with ultrasound. “We went from working a 96-well plate in an hour and a half to a 384 plate in 10-12 minutes,” also using fewer reagents and thus multiplying the number of tests that can be analyzed with the stocks carried out. “With certain automated machines, you can make thousands of swabs a day or a little more, and these are tied to your specific reagent kit. Several stop now precisely because there is a shortage, the reagents cannot be found. We have solved the problem because the machine we have purchased is an open machine. “
The expense to accelerate the tampon chain in Padua “is around 700-800 thousand euros”. The super machine weighed “304 thousand euros, VAT included”. Now, Flor concludes, “what I think is that you don’t need hundreds or thousands of these machines, but a limited number of laboratories equipped and with adequate human resources and the collateral technology necessary to make the best use of a similar machine.” Otherwise, the effect would be that of a cathedral in the desert.
Crisanti, who is the expert virologist of Coronavirus? “I, a slightly crazy virologist with a passion for art”
Governor Luca Zaia also infuriated him yesterday: “The teacher is a beacon for us.” But who really is “the man with the tampons”, a definition in which, furthermore, the person in question says that he does not recognize himself and prefers to describe himself as “a madman from England”?
Last update: 08:45
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