As more and more patients are hospitalized with COVID-19, resources at health facilities are being strained. That’s why flattening the curve is so important, so that there’s not a sudden influx of patients and then a shortage of beds or vital equipment.

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In Italy, which moved too late to limit exposure, this has already happened: Hospitals in the north of the country are overwhelmed, and running out of space and equipment, causing the death toll to spike. But when one Italian hospital ran out of valves for crucial respiratory machines, local manufacturers stepped in to 3D print replacements. It started with a call from Nunzia Vallini , a journalist at Giornale di Brescia , a newspaper in Brescia, a provincial capital in northern Italy. On Friday, she explained to Massimo Temporelli , founder of the digital manufacturing lab FabLab, the problem she had learned about: A hospital in Chiari, […]

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