NHS will have ‘nowhere near’ enough ventilators to cope with coronavirus peak when it hits Easter Sunday peak with just 30 machines coming in first batch
- NHS is 21,825 ventilators short of estimated 30,000 it will need for virus peak
- Government previously ordered 10,000 ventilators from manufacturer Dyson
- But industry source reportedly warned targets are ‘nowhere near’ being reached
- It follows 684 more coronavirus deaths in the UK on Friday, taking total to 3,605
The NHS will have ‘nowhere near’ enough ventilators to cope with the coronavirus peak over Easter Sunday with only 30 to arrive in the first batch, according to sources.
Hospitals across Britain are still 21,825 ventilators short of the estimated 30,000 it will need when the crisis, which has infected over 38,000 Britons, is at its height.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock on Friday said the virus continues its ‘grim march’ and admitted that next week is likely to be worse still, potentially topping out at more than 1,000 deaths per day by Easter Sunday.
The NHS will have ‘nowhere near’ enough ventilators to cope with the coronavirus peak, according to sources (pictured: file photo of a doctor examining an intubated patient’
Efforts to get manufacturers to produce ventilators are underway, with the government previously ordering 10,000 from Dyson – despite the engineering giant never making them before.
Billionaire entrepreneur James Dyson said ‘the race is on’ to get the medical machines created specifically for the pandemic.
The British firm, most famous for its vacuum cleaners, said it has a prototype tested on humans and could start delivering them from mid-April, pending ‘regulatory approval’.
But sources related to one of the ventilator collaborations within British industry reportedly warned manufacturing targets were ‘nowhere near’ being reached.
One source told The Guardian: ‘You just can’t do this sort of stuff overnight, which is what they’re trying to do. But if there’s a second wave in the winter, we’ll have a lot more by then.’
A second source said it was impossible to ‘produce into the peak’.
A graphic representation of the CoVent ventilator, designed by Dyson, is seen attached to a hospital bed. Efforts to get manufacturers to produce ventilators are underway
The Ventilator Challenge UK group – which includes Dyson and Rolls-Royce – have said they aim to make 1,500 machines a week by the end of the month, but only 30 are said to arrive in the first batch.
Under codenames Project Oyster and Project Penguin, the consortium has used its design and building resources to deliver two models in two weeks.
Project Oyster has involved making slight tweaks to an existing design by Oxfordshire-based firm Penlon, aimed at speeding up the assembly process.
The consortium is also lending its muscle to increasing production of a device called the ParaPac ventilator, made by Smiths Medical, under Project Penguin.
Consortium lead Dick Elsy said: ‘To provide some context, Penlon and Smiths ordinarily have combined capacity for between 50 and 60 ventilators per week.
A graphic representation of a CoVent ventilator, designed by Dyson. The Government previously ordered 10,000 ventilators from the manufacturer
‘However, thanks to the scale and resources of the wider consortium, we are targeting production of at least 1,500 units a week of the Penlon and Smiths models combined within a matter of weeks.’
Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, deputy chief medical officer for England, said the government ‘don’t know’ when the peak of the pandemic is expected to be, and expressed confidence in equipment supplies.
Addressing whether the NHS will have enough ventilators during the peak, given some fear they will not receive the critical care they need, he said: ‘I can tell you I don’t think we’re anywhere close to that kind of scenario at the moment.
‘We will watch it extremely closely and we will make decisions as we need to on a day-by-day basis.’
It follows the UK announcing 684 more coronavirus deaths on Friday, taking the total number of fatalities to 3,605.
Yet again the number is a record one-day high – this has been the case almost every day this week, with each day since Tuesday announcing more victims than the last.
The figures mean the number of people dead from COVID-19 in the UK has risen five-fold in a week, from just 759 last Friday, March 27.
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