NMU rises to challenge of fighting Covid-19
Our faculties and academics at Nelson Mandela University have combined forces with hospitals, businesses and communities in the Nelson Mandela Bay metro to help fight Covid-19 at a time when society needs us most.
The biggest battle now is to break the chain of transmission. Masks, hand-washing and sanitisers are the first and most critical line of defence.
A team of chemists from InnoVenton — the chemical technology research institute in NMU’s faculty of science — is daily producing hundreds of litres of 70% alcohol sanitisers in our laboratories for distribution to our communities.
Our provincial hospitals are critically short of protective gear, and all gear from our laboratories not in use, including face masks, goggles, lab gowns and gloves, is being donated to these health-care workers.
A team from our faculty of humanities’ departments of visual arts and media communication is engaging our metro’s garment industry and communities in a strategy to produce face masks and protective clothing.
Our microbiologists are on standby to advise the hospital in their capacity as experts in virology and how to respond to the spread of the pandemic.
When the lockdown was announced, local manufacturers engaged with our faculty of engineering, the built environment and technology (EBET) to share what resources are available and to find out how to assist with the provincial effort.
Doctors were consulted regarding the most pressing needs and doctors at Livingstone Hospital expressed a dire need for face shields.
Two senior engineers at eNtsa, Riaan Opperman and Akshay Lakhani, co-opted doctoral graduate and 3D printing specialist Sean Poole to print face shields, hundreds of which have been supplied to the public and private sector.
Given the shortage of ventilators in the province, engineers at eNtsa are working with local manufacturers such as Hansens to investigate the production of ventilators. The eNtsa team is also evaluating innovative ideas involving scuba equipment and working with a consortium of companies and Walter Sisulu University on the reverse engineering and manufacturing of the Nuffield 200 ventilator system.
Anaesthetist Dr Lorenzo Boretti, at Livingstone Hospital, requested an intubation box to protect staff and patients when performing endotracheal intubation during sedation and operating procedures.
Students in the faculty of EBET’s advanced engineering design group, together with local companies CustomWorks and Shibah Engineering, came up with an intubation box designed to reduce aerosolised droplets generated by patients during intubation, stopping the droplets from becoming airborne and putting staff at risk.
To assist with the capturing of patient data, tracing and tracking of Covid-19 positive patients and mortalities, the faculty of EBET’s centre for community technologies (CCT) is partnering with the ICT industry, the Eastern Cape department of health and the Nelson Mandela Bay Emergency Response team to develop and customise smart digital solutions for case identification.
CCT director Professor Darelle van Greunen and her team have created several ICT solutions for Covid-19 management, including a unique cloud-based patient identifier that can trace patients through the system at all levels.
This also assists in tracing people who may have been in contact with infected patients and facilitates the capturing of co-morbidities.
To boost Covid-19 testing, the Eastern Cape disaster management teams have identified high-risk areas and the National Health Laboratory Services has provided six large mobile testing units which have been deployed across the province with more than 3,000 PCR testing kits, and more being sent to them as they go. Results are available in 24 hours.
NMU has a large mobile clinic called Zanempilo (“bringing health”) which brings medical services to communities without access to these in the Nelson Mandela Bay metro, staffed by our health sciences professionals and students.
Zanempilo will serve as the seventh mobile testing unit.
The mobile units will significantly increase the testing throughout the province, including the deep rural areas.
By April 5, only 538 tests had been done in the province, predominantly in urban areas; 25 were positive, 338 were negative and 170 were pending.
We fear the low number of positives is not an accurate reflection, given the vast rural areas such as the former Transkei.
The PCR tests are comprehensive, not the rapid tests, which can give false results.
Many of us carry various strains of the coronavirus as other forms of influenza, such as swine flu, SARS and MERS, and because we have been exposed to them and other coronaviruses, we carry the coronavirus antigen, and the IgG and IgM antibodies.
The rapid test picks these up and can then give a positive result for Covid-19 when the person is negative.
If high numbers of people are incorrectly diagnosed as positive, this puts strain on medical facilities, and dilutes care for patients with Covid-19.
Furthermore, antibodies against Covid-19 take a while to develop. This leads to false negative rapid tests.
Planning ahead, we have been identifying potential field hospital spaces together with local and provincial government, including sports grounds on our campuses.
Our new medical school facility on the Missionvale Campus
could also be repurposed into a field hospital. Along with seven other medical schools at SA universities, we will be participating in the World Health Organisation’s global Solidarity Trial.
These are clinical trials on the antiviral combinations being used to treat people for Covid-19, including combinations of ARVs, the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine and other antiviral drugs.
Covid-19 has also highlighted the need for SA to manufacture life-saving drugs.
None of the advanced pharmaceutical intermediates (APIs) or drug substances for HIV, TB and malaria are made locally, which makes them incredibly expensive, and there are concerns there could be a decrease in supply.
Professor Paul Watts, holder of the SARChI chair in microfluidic bio/chemical processing at NMU, explains their research group has done a huge amount of research into new ways of manufacturing generic drugs in SA for Aids, TB, malaria, cancer and influenza. Watts says if the ARV/ hydroxychloroquine/ antiviral drug combinations prove to be an effective treatment for Covid-19, they could produce these with their new flow process technology.
It has taken his team 20 years of collaboration with UK researchers to develop this technology for SA, and they would be able to manufacture the drugs 20%-30% cheaper than the imports.
The majority of SA’s APIs are imported and, over the past 10 years, Watts says SA has spent about R120bn buying in Aids, TB and malaria APIs from India and China.
The local manufacture of key generic drugs for major diseases and viral pandemics in SA and Africa could give more people access to the drugs.
Time is not on our side, and as a metro and province, we are going to need to considerably gear up our collaborative effort and emergency response.