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 Ahead of an expected surge of cases that could overwhelm Britain's
publicly funded health service, Prime Minister Boris Johnson made an
urgent appeal to manufacturers 10 days ago to build ventilators to
help keep patients alive.
Billionaire founder James Dyson said he had drawn on the company's
expertise in air movement, motors, power systems, manufacturing and
supply chain to design and build an entirely new ventilator, The
CoVent, that could be deployed in this time of "grave international
crisis".
"The core challenge was how to design and deliver a new,
sophisticated medical product in volume and in an extremely short
space of time," Dyson said on Wednesday evening in an email to staff
seen by Reuters.
"The race is now on to get it into production."
Dyson will have to secure approval from the British medical
regulator for the device and its manufacturing process. If it
receives the green light, production could start early next month.
The company revolutionized the vacuum cleaner market with its
bagless cyclonic device in the 1990s and has since gone on to build
air purifiers, hand dryers and fans from its base in south west
England and manufacturing plants in Malaysia, Singapore and the
Philippines.
Separately, British engineer Babcock said it had joined forces with
a leading medical equipment company to design a ventilator, while
carmakers and aerospace groups are waiting for the government to
sign off on an alternative design.
The companies, including some of the biggest names in Formula 1
racing and aerospace such as McLaren and Airbus, are racing to boost
production after the government said it did not have enough
ventilators in its armoury.
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VENTILATOR RUSH
Britain currently has about 8,000 ventilators with another 8,000 on order to
come into the health system in a week or so.
By 0900 GMT on Wednesday some 9,529 people had tested positive for the virus in
the United Kingdom while 463 patients had died.
Britain is working to acquire more testing kits to help establish whether people
have previously been infected with coronavirus, as opposed to antigen tests
which show if someone has the virus as they are experiencing symptoms.
Many staff within the National Health Service (NHS) have not been tested, a
major concern for health workers and a cause of mounting criticism of the
government's response.
Chris Whitty, the government's top medical adviser, said testing was vitally
important but a global shortage of the materials needed was causing a supply
bottleneck.
"Every country is wanting this new test, for a disease that wasn't actually
being tested for anywhere three months ago," England's chief medical officer
told a Downing Street news conference on Wednesday.
Britain has bought 3.5 million antibody testing kits - largely used to determine
if someone has already had the virus - and is currently making sure they work
before distributing them.
They will first be used to test health workers.
(Editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
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