In April, the state contracted with SIU to prepare Viral Transport Medium for COVID-19 testing.
State leaders say they need more, and the university is working to meet that need.
After a team of faculty, staff and students produced 40,000 units of Viral Transport Medium, they were asked to make more.
Interim Vice Chancellor for Research Gary Kinsel says the orders haven’t stopped.
“There approaching a hundred thousand vials at this point.”
Inside the vials is a mixture of chemicals designed to keep the DNA of the virus alive until it reaches a testing facility.
Kinsel says it took the team 750 hours to produce the first 100,000 vials and they’re on track to produce 40,000 more.
The team also developed a way to speed up production.
“When they were first starting out, they were using hand-held pipettes so it took three times as long to get the same amount of work accomplished, now they’re using they’re called auto pipettors and that makes it go a lot, lot faster.”
For WSIU I’m Benjy Jeffords.
