Talking about social distancing, personal hygiene, face masks, face shields, hand sanitizer and many more which we are the common topic in 2020.
As the cases around the world are increasing, all the above items had shown shortage but even if items like face masks, face shield and hand sanitizer are shortage, there are still alternative solutions to protect ourselves such as cloth masks instead or surgical masks, wash hands frequently if you do not have hand sanitizer.
One of the most important things during this pandemic is shortage of nasal swab for testing of coronavirus (COVID-19).
Do you know that there are different types of samples collection?
- The Upper Respiratory
- The Lower Respiratory
Below information was shared by AssayGenie.
Image credit to AssayGenie and Brigham and Women’s Hospital
When collection of nasopharyngeal swabs (most preferred and most accurate viral swabs) is not possible, there are still alternative such as:
Image credit to Stellar Scientific
- Oropharyngeal specimen
- Nasal mid-turbinate swab
- Anterior nares
- Nasopharyngeal wash/aspirate or nasal aspirate specimen
How can 3D Printing Help?
During the battling with COVID-19 where many countries and factories are lockdown where raw material or manpower may have shortage too, there are many companies whom came forward to help and contributing medical supplies to help battling with COVID-19.
USF Health creates 3D-printed Nasal Swabs for COVID-19 testing using surgical-grade quality materials, they can produce 3,000 nasal swabs a day.
Image credits to BayNews 9
Carbon, the 3D printing company based in California, is also using its technology that enables the creation of lattice structures to create test swab that is more efficient as it helps to reduce the material usage and therefore reducing the printing time and improving the comfort and performance for patients and healthcare workers.
Lattice Structure Technology Image Credits to Carbon
Resolution Medical Lattice Swab design made by Carbon and image credits to 3Dnatives