Why Are Filter Tips Important For Covid Testing?
The world is facing a huge Covid-19 pandemic situation that has led to an incredible loss of human life. This pandemic has saturated the entire health system in many countries and millions of patients are suffering the consequences from the lack of medical testing and treatment facilities. Many laboratories across the world have shortage of testing equipment including filtered pipette tips that are required to precisely move liquid between vails during the Covid 19 testing process, without the risk of micropipette contamination. So, Filtered pipette tips, along with other essential laboratory equipment have played a critical role in supporting the healthcare system to manage the pandemic.
What are filtered tips?
Pipette tips are one of the most commonly used consumables in clinical and research laboratories. Used in conjunction with micropipettes, they are used to transfer a precise amount of sample liquid from one container to another.
Filtered pipettes tips are designed to prevent the sample being transferred from aerosol formation. Aerosols are small liquid or solid particles that are airborne. These small particles can remain for a long time that affects the testing negatively. Filtered pipettes tips help to reduce the risk of aerosols formation and also prevent cross contamination of the pipette between different test samples.
How are they different from regular non-filtered tips?
A standard tip is a multi-purpose tip for many laboratory and industrial testing applications. It does not have the required specifications to prevent cross-contamination of the pipette.
Filter tips provide a HDPE barrier between the tip cone and the sample to prevent cross-contamination without hampering airflow or absorbing the sample. They are specially used for sample preparation where aerosol formation risk is high and cross contamination can occur while switching test samples using the same testing equipment/pipettor. The filter tips are pre-sterilized, DNase/RNase-free and are more useful for sensitive applications like Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR).
Microlit ProTipTM Filtered Pipette Tips are designed to be low retention which also enables viscous blood samples to be dispensed completed during Covid19 testing. This ensures high pipetting accuracy and maintains the integrity of the experiment.
Importance of Filter tips in Covid Testing
The pandemic is getting worse every day, which is creating an increased demand for new tests both in terms of volume and urgency. Testing laboratories and government research institutes are continuously working to overcome this backlog. With the huge amount of testing requirements, laboratories need to ensure that the covid samples and testing equipment are not cross-contaminated. Filtered Tips help them ensure that.
FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have issued guidelines for testing laboratories that ensure the safety of sampling and testing results. This includes the use of filtered pipette tips. Pipette tips that could be used in covid testing, should be disposable, aerosols-free and chemically compatible. Only filter tips that comply with all the prescribed guidelines can be used. These guidelines eliminate the risk of cross contamination between the samples and also keeps the laboratory environment safe.
With the high demand of testing equipment such as micropipettes, bottle top dispensers and especially filter tips, Microlit is playing its part in providing testing laboratories with timely supplies of state-of-the-art equipment. This allows our diagnostics customers to conduct their test experiments with great certainty.