On the third floor of The Research Institute of St. Joe’s Hamilton, Dr. David Bulir is in a constant war to find pieces of plastic roughly the size of a pinky finger: pipette tips.
They are ubiquitous in labs around the world. Scientists and lab technologists use them to transfer miniscule volumes of liquid.But amid the ongoing pandemic that has infected over 40 million people, including over 200,000 Canadians, they are critical to conducting novel coronavirus tests.
Without them, the tests can’t be completed.“I never would have thought in a million years I would be trying to find pipette tips from any supplier that I can,” said Bulir, also a researcher from McMaster University. “There is just a demand for every single thing that a lab uses.