ROME – The woman who works with viruses does not like to find herself in the spotlight even if she admits that she has managed to do with her team “what few are capable of”. Isolate one is no small thing. Especially if it is not known, few have photographed it, and it has the breath of all the best groups of researchers in the world on its neck.
Maria Rosaria Capobianchi, 67 years old, from Procida, is the coordinator of the almost entirely pink team that has flushed the infectious agent responsible for thousands of infections and about 300 deaths. “When we saw him under the microscope and realized it was him, there were leaps of joy in the ward,” recalls the announcement of the colleagues at night Francesca Colavita is Concetta Castilletti, present in the Spallanzani maximum security laboratory, BL3, when the microorganism imported from China revealed itself. The 2019-nCov, taken from the liquid of the Chinese patient still hospitalized, it began to replicate quickly and proved capable of damaging the attacked cells, altering their shape. The overwhelming proof that he was the great wanted.
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Maria Rosaria has been managing the virology laboratory of the national institute for infectious diseases for 20 years. Twenty others passed by bending over the counters of Sapienza University where she learned to become an “artisan” virologist. Graduated in human genetics, specialized in virology, she decided to move to Rome to make her researcher dreams come true and, above all, to follow Felice Cerreto, the man she married in the 80s, with whom she has two children, to the capital.
He says it is his merit if he has reached this level: «He tolerated my absences, the constant travels, the return home at unlikely times. He understood how important it was for me to be able to pamper my cells ». Yes, because it is so. Described by this shy virologist and little accustomed to media interventions, viruses are “tipetti” to be handled with due caution, respecting their response times, almost caressing them with tricks.
He has the same caressing phrases towards his perfidious challengers Concetta Castilletti, 56 years old, two children, proud to be from Ragusa (“I have welcoming fellow citizens, like me”), nicknamed “golden hands” for their ability to scavenge microbes under the hood. He has a united family behind him who is his great ally: «At home they are used to seeing me embroiled in emergencies. I don’t remember a life other than this. It has always been this way ». He has a hobby of basketball. She does not play it but with her husband and children she takes care of a Roman club with a team in Serie B and C. She accompanies the children to the summer camps. As head of the emerging virus laboratory, Concetta lived the experience of Sars, Ebola, pandemic from H1N1 (the so-called swine flu), of the Brazilian Zika and of chikungunya, the virus carried by the mosquito that raged two summers ago also in Rome.
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The youngest is Francesca Colavita, 30 years old, team of four, from Molise of Campobasso. During the epidemic of Ebola she left several times for Liberia and Sierra Leone, where the haemorrhagic fever virus hit hard. She did not hold back when it came to participating in security and cooperation projects after the emergency ended in those countries. Allo Spallanzani Francesca has a fixed-term contract expiring. She was on duty when the coronavirus finally let herself be isolated: «What a thrill, it was less difficult than expected. Now I’m sorry I have to leave you, they call me for an urgency. ” When there was a need to double the shifts of 24 hours normally used for tests on suspected meningitis, malaria and transplants, they called. He didn’t have it repeated twice.
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February 2, 2020 (change February 2, 2020 | 23:32)
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