5 ideas on the cutting edge
The Covid-19 crisis has brought the country’s top experts to the fore. The virus has now been squashed to nearly nothing in NZ, but scientists are working on fascinating projects aiming to help the global effort — and better prepare for a potential second wave. Science reporter
Jamie Morton looks at five of them. Kiwi ingenuity helps patients breathe easier
In March, when Covid-19 rates were surging to frightening levels, one of the most pressing questions was whether hospitals had enough ventilators to meet a flood of patients.
They didn’t: internal reports since released show that up to 4000 projected patients at any one time would’ve had access to fewer than 900 of the machines.
Ventilators, which move air in and out of the lungs, are one of the few interventions that help critical Covid-19 patients.
Global demand for them remains at an all-time high.
Major players like Ford and Dyson have rushed forward overseas, but New Zealand’s effort has been one of nimble ingenuity in the Kiwi tradition.
One project by Hamiltonbased ES Plastics aims to pump out 100 units of a prototype per day.
Remarkably, the firm’s managing director Jeff Sharp managed to develop and manufacture his machine, the RESPirator, within a week.
Sharp sought clinical input into the design from two emergency medicine specialists, Dr Martyn Harvey and Dr Giles Chanwai, who also happened to be his neighbours in rural Waikato.
The RESPirator design is based on an old-style pneumatic ventilator that was used in Waikato Hospital until around 2008, and development has been boosted with a $457,000 government grant.
A grant of $150,000 has also been awarded to another ventilator project with the potential to double capacity in intensive-care units.
That prototype has been designed and tested on mechanical lungs by a group of scientists led by the University of Canterbury’s Distinguished Professor Geoff Chase.
After testing and proving it, Chase aimed to make the software and designs freely available so other countries can make their own.
“We believe this can, and will, save countless lives internationally by doubling ventilator capacity and sparing doctors from having to make terrible end-of-life care choices,” Chase said.
The new technology used mechatronics and modern manufacturing like 3D printing to create a system able to support more than one patient at a time.
Unravelling every NZ positive case
New Zealand’s tally of confirmed Covid-19 cases stands at just over 1500 — and now scientists want to explore the genetic make-up of all of them.
Through unravelling the genome, or genetic jigsaw, of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, scientists have gained crucial insights into the origin and spread of the virus, and pointed vaccinologists to specific parts of its protein structure to target.
ESR scientists have been sequencing virus genomes at incredibly fast rates — typically within 48 hours — with help from hand-held technology designed for swift processing.
A year-long collaboration between ESR and Otago University will generate virus genomes from every Covid-19 case in the country.
The scientists don’t just want to reveal the evolution of all of the cases, but also where they sat inside our known transmission chains.
“When combined with geographic information, we will be able to reveal pathways of viral spread — including from the global population — domestically and at the community level,” project leader Dr Jemma Geoghegan said.
“These results can be used to direct public health interventions such as quarantine.”
Until recently, studies of viral outbreaks have been retrospective — or where spread within a population was only realised after the fact.
“Now, however, advances in the next generation sequencing can generate whole viral genomes directly from patient samples within hours of the sample being received.” The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has awarded the project a $600,000 grant.
From grapes to hand sanitiser
What does wine-making have to do with Covid-19?
Scientists are exploring whether grape marc — the skins and seeds remaining after pressing — can be converted into hand sanitiser.
“Using winery waste to produce ethanol for hand sanitiser is untested in the New Zealand context with our varietals,” said M.
J. Loza, chief executive of the Bragato Research Institute, a wine industry group.
“We haven’t had the capability to conduct a study like this in New Zealand until now, with our new research winery opening in February.”
The eight-month study, supported with an $84,700 Government grant, aims to deliver ethanol-based hand sanitiser, which will be bottled and donated.
The value of wine industry exports are climbing towards $2 billion annually, so the industry is facing a growing challenge to deal with grape waste — Marlborough alone produces about 46,000 tonnes of grape marc each harvest.
“Managing grape marc has probably been viewed as a disposal issue. However, the marc is increasingly being studied for other properties,” Loza said.
“We know that grape marc is rich in valuable compounds. The challenges lie in finding a new economy for grape marc without creating a bigger environmental footprint, as well as finding a financially viable market for a new product.”
Laser-cut face shields
Kiwi researchers have turned to a simple but effective design to make and distribute thousands of face shields for front-line medical workers.
Comprised of a plastic frame and transparent plastic sheet, the shields were developed by Auckland Bioengineering Institute engineer Dr Paul Roberts, with support from MedTech CoRE collaborators and industry partners.
Roberts and his team sprang into action after local clinicians expressed concerns about the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the healthcare sector.
“Face shields are not typically held in stock as part of normal personal protective gear, so clinicians were driving to Mitre 10 and Bunnings to find something to use as face shields.”
Roberts used plastic glasses deployed in some hospital EDs as a starting point.
“By mid-March, some EDs were already seeing cases coming through, and wanted a shield that would help protect their whole face.”
The face shields provide another layer of protection, to be worn over surgical face masks, to reduce the viral load that healthcare workers can be exposed to.
But, as Roberts cautioned, they “aren’t perfect”, and in an ideal situation more consultation with users would have enabled design refinements.
The face shield was originally prototyped by laser cutting the plastic shield and retrofitting to frames of safety glasses available to some DHBs.
High and urgent demand prompted them to switch to injection moulding frames and stamping the plastic sheet, allowing production volumes of 10,000 per day.
Pest control to pandemic
A low-cost, smart thermal camera system designed for tracking predators threatening native birds has been repurposed to monitor crowds from a safe distance.
The Cocophany Project, bringing together specialists from the University of Canterbury, the Auckland Bioengineering Institute and Callaghan Innovation, aims to create a device that can measure forehead temperature to within half a degree.
And all without a person having to operate it.
Canterbury mechanical engineers Julian Phillips, lecturer Tim Giffney and Professor Mark Jermy have developed a temperature reference to give a constant check calibration of the devices, which are now under trial and may be rolled out shortly.
About 30 soldiers from Burnham, as well as police officers, have been used to test and calibrate the cameras, which could be deployed at airports, hospitals and supermarkets around the country.
A separate project, led by University of Auckland’s Associate Professor Nick Gant, is working towards a matchbox-sized body sensor that can be worn under the arm to monitor whether someone has a fever.