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There have been reports that No 10 is in talks with industry to re-tool factories to make ventilators.
Professor David Delpy CBE FREng FRS FMedSci, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, says:
“This proposal assumes that the NHS wants more of the latest spec ventilators with all the usual manufacturers’ guarantees and liability cover. Since modern ventilators are usually electronically controlled with a variety of built-in sensors, there may be supply chain limitations on how rapidly one can ramp up production.
“However, the previous generation of mechanical ventilators were relatively simpler, and components could be manufactured by many engineering companies with fairly standard machine tools. These are certainly adequate for all but the most complex ventilation support cases, but I suspect there are currently no UK manufacturers of these (since there is no NHS market for them). They are still used by the military or in emergency situations since they need no electrical power, only a compressed air/gas supply.
“Over the last two decades, many of these mechanical ventilators have been collected, often by charities, and donated to less developed parts of the world, where there may not be a guaranteed continuous electrical power. There may still be quite a few that have been collected, or that are still in storage and could be quickly refurbished – provided they could be adequately warrantied and the suppliers’ liabilities covered, which may require emergency legislation.”
All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:
http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19
The SMC also produced a Factsheet on COVID-19 which is available here:
https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/smc-novel-coronavirus-factsheet/
Declared interests
None received.