With a global shortage of key elements for Covid-19 tests, Sligo University Hospital (SUH) put a call out to their neighbours at IT Sligo to see if they could help.
Dr Jeremy Bird, Head of the School of Science at the college, quickly responded. He scoured his own stocks and then drove to the ITs in Athlone and Galway to raid their stores, as well as using contacts in the UK to secure a small quantity of another elusive ingredient from there.
The result now is that scientists at a laboratory in IT Sligo are making two critical elements of the Covid-19 tests. They are preparing the viral transfer medium for nasal swabs and a Lysis solution which is used in the extraction of RNA from the virus which is then used to diagnose the presence of