British company Dyson — best known for its sleek vacuum cleaners — has announced it has designed a new ventilator called the “CoVent” in just ten days, according to CNN, to help the UK treat coronavirus patients.
The company is planning to produce 15,000 ventilators to help fight the pandemic, 5,000 of which will be donated to other countries.
“A ventilator supports a patient who is no longer able to maintain their own airways, but sadly there is currently a significant shortage, both in the UK and other countries around the world,” company founder James Dyson wrote in an open letter, as quoted by CNN
Just ten days ago, Dyson received a call from UK prime minster Boris Johnson, asking the company to help the country’s National Health Service by supplying ventilators.
The newly designed CoVent ventilator is a portable battery-powered ventilator that can be mounted to the side of a hospital bed.
Ten days is an extremely short turnaround time to design something so complex.
“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 added. “The race is now on to get it into production.”
The news comes after tech magnate Elon Musk announced late last night via Twitter that he’s planning to reopen Tesla’s Gigafactory in Buffalo, New York to also start manufacturing ventilators.
