When it comes to managing the spread of COVID-19, China says it has placed the utmost importance on early detection and screening. In face of the last few outbreaks in Beijing, Qingdao, and currently in Shijiazhuang, capital of northern China's Hebei province, a special kind of inflatable lab has been used to test up to 1 million swab samples a day. CGTN's Xu Mengqi reports.
Foldable, inflatable, and scalable. These giant bubble tents may not look like your idea of a COVID-19 testing lab. But that's what they are, and in China, they can be used to process hundreds of thousands of swab samples a day. Their design originated from Shanghai's Tongji University.
SU YUNSHENG Assistant Dean, College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University "The essence of biosafety protection in a P2-level lab for COVID-19 is air management and avoiding the air from flowing in an opposite direction. So the balloon structure is a good solution."
The key to quick and mass testing of COVID-19 lies in automation, with robots able to extract the nucleic acid at the heart of the process, 10 times faster than humans. It's also essential to be able to move these machines around whenever and wherever they are needed. That was the task Su Yunsheng was given, when BGI genomics, a leading Chinese sequencing and testing company approached his team in early 2020.
SU YUNSHENG Assistant Dean, College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University "We had our considerations when designing the volume of the modules. They had to be a size that allows for rapid expansion, but at the same time be transportable by air. In the end, we settled on 70 square meters, 14 by 5."
Suitable for mass production, and easy to set up, logistics was center stage in the development of the air-inflated testing lab. And it has since been exported to a dozen countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Gabon and Ethiopia.
SU YUNSHENG Assistant Dean, College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University "In a follow-up study it was clear to us that in these countries, the adoption of the air labs in early screening played an important role in controlling the pandemic."
Su Yunsheng says the cost of building an inflatable lab is less than half of that of a traditional one. And the team is now testing inflatable wards as well. Xu Mengqi, CGTN, Shanghai.
link:https://news.cgtn.com/news/7745544f77554464776c6d636a4e6e62684a4856/index.html
