The government of the state of São Paulo, through the Butantan Institute, sent 3.800 complete tests to detect Covid-19 and a robot to extract samples to Unicamp. According to the coordinator of the Diagnostics Front of the University task force, professor Alessandro Farias, the material will already start to be used this week.
The test kits are of South Korean origin and were validated by the team responsible for diagnostics at Unicamp. “We have already validated it, we have already run it here and it works very well", points out Alessandro.
Regarding the robot, the professor explains that it is equipment that allows the extraction of 32 samples per hour, a process that takes longer manually.
The materials that Unicamp had already acquired, he highlights, will continue to be used, but the shipment immediately increases testing. “This helps a lot in expanding the capacity to carry out increasingly faster exams”, he says.
Testing network
In the state of São Paulo, the Butantan Institute, an institution linked to State Department of Health, leads a platform of 38 laboratories that aims to optimize testing. Faced with the main problem in carrying out diagnoses, which is the lack and difficulty in obtaining inputs, the agency sought to coordinate the sending of materials to centers accredited for diagnosis, with the Clinical Pathology Laboratory of the Hospital of Clinics from Unicamp, one of them.
