VENTILATORS THE NEWEST BUSINESS DURING CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK

             The governments have ordered thousands of ventilators to help ease the pressure on hospitals caused by the Coronavirus crisis, for patients with the worst effects of the infection, a ventilator offers the best chance of survival. Simply put, a ventilator takes over the body's breathing process when disease has caused the lungs to fail, this gives the patient time to fight off the infection and recover, various types of medical ventilation can be used.
                                                                 

According to the World Health Organization WHO, some 80% of people with Covid-19 recover without needing hospital treatment, in these severe cases, the virus causes damage to the lungs, the body's immune system detects this and expands blood vessels so more immune cells enter, but this can cause fluid to enter the lungs, making it harder to breathe and causing the body's oxygen levels to drop, to alleviate this, a machine ventilator is used to push air, with increased levels of oxygen into the lungs. The ventilator also has a humidifier, which modifies adds heat and moisture to the medical air so it matches the patient's body temperature, patients are given medication to relax the respiratory muscles so their breathing can be fully regulated by the machine, people with milder symptoms may be given ventilation using face masks, nasal masks or mouthpieces which allow pressurized air or mixtures of gases to be pushed into the lungs.
University College London engineers have worked with clinicians at UCLH and Mercedes Formula One to build what is known as the Continuous Positive Airway Pressure CPAP device, it's being trialed at several London hospitals and if all goes well, the Mercedes AMG-HPP group can begin building up to 1,000 of the machines per day from next week April 6. The CPAP device has already got approval from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, early reports from Lombardy in northern Italy suggest about 50% of patients given CPAP have avoided the need for invasive mechanical ventilation, however the use of CPAP machines in patients with contagious respiratory infections has raised some concern, as any small leaks around the mask could spray droplets on medical staff, hoods, where pressurized oxygen is pumped in via a valve are also being commonly used to treat Coronavirus patients, partly because they reduce the risk of airborne transmission of the virus from droplets in breath, these are known as non invasive ventilation, as no internal tubes are required. However, Intensive Care Units ICUs would generally put patients suffering acute respiratory distress on mechanical ventilation quickly to ensure oxygen levels in the body stay normal.
Dr Shondipon Laha, from the Intensive Care Society, told the BBC most patients with the novel Coronavirus would not need a mechanical ventilator and could be treated at home or with supplementary oxygen, but although there were risks when using ventilators, such as not knowing who would suffer long term effects, sometimes a ventilator was the only way of getting oxygen into the patient, another issue, Dr Laha explained, was having enough of the right staff in place to manage all the ventilators expected to be needed, a ventilator is a complex beast, it can cause a patient trauma if not set up properly, the technical aspects are challenging, people have knowledge on varying types of ventilator in other specialties but may need support in using them in intensive care if they are unfamiliar with this.
In the United States of America, Ford Motors and General Electric's health care division said on Monday that they together planned to produce 50,000 ventilators over the next 100 days to help meet the needs of hospitals during the Coronavirus pandemic, Ford plans to continue making about 30,000 ventilators a month once the initial batch has been made. Ford will use a plant in Rawsonville, Michigan, about 500 workers to make the medical devices, Ford's effort is the second such initiative by a major automaker, General Motors has said it plans to make ventilators at one of its factories in Kokomo Ind, with Ventec Life Systems, a ventilator manufacturer, Tesla the electric car company, has also said that it intends to make ventilators with Medtronic at a factory in Buffalo. General Electric has licensed the design of the ventilator from Airon Corporation of Melbourne, Fla. The device works on air pressure and does not need electricity and the companies said it could be useful for most Coronavirus patients who need help breathing, Ford and GE said last week that Ford would help increase production of another ventilator based on a design from GE Healthcare. Johnson & Johnson said it had identified a lead candidate for a vaccine for the Coronavirus and planned to ramp up both production and clinical testing, Abbott Laboratories rose on reports that it had said a new test that could detect the virus in five minutes had been cleared for use be the Food and Drug Administration, but there were lingering signs of caution in the financial markets, most notably, oil prices tumbled to their lowest levels since 2002 and in the stock market, Monday's rally came on relatively light volume, said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak, a trading and asset management firm, that suggests a lack of conviction among investors.
In France, respirator maker Air Liquid has teamed up with car parts maker Valeo, car maker PSA and electrical equipment company Schneider Electric to produce some 10,000 ventilators by mid May, around 250 ventilators will be delivered to emergency rooms in the next week, French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday, he also announced that France will need to boost its domestic production of medical gear as the international battle for medical supplies makes importing an increasingly un-viable option. The priority today is to produce more in Europe and France, by the end of the year, I want us to be fully and completely independent in production, Macron said. The French government has earmarked 4 Billion Euro in additional funding for the state health budget to fund the masks and ventilators.
Governments and medical professionals around the globe are scrambling to get their hands on life saving ventilators needed to help Coronavirus patients, drastic medical equipment shortages in even the most developed economies have put the globe in a collective race against time to produce the ventilators needed to save people from the deadly respiratory illness caused by the novel Coronavirus, officially called SARS-CoV-2.