At the height of Italy’s lockdown in April factories were shuttered across the country. But in Piombino Dese, a small town about 20 miles outside of Venice, the hulking glass-cutting machines at the Stevanato Group kept whirring along, spitting out millions of ampoules and syringes.

Hundreds of employees donned face masks to work around the clock in three daily shifts, seven days a week – making everything from insulin pen cartridges to miniature glass barrels and — most pressingly — millions of tiny sterile vials, each one smaller than a single fluid ounce, that one day will house doses of a Covid-19 vaccine.