Dyson Industries received an order from the UK government for 10,000 ventilators to support the country’s National Health Service for coronavirus patients.
James Dyson, the company’s billionaire founder, proudly confirmed the order with news sources this week.
“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,” Dyson stated.
Dyson explained his company had designed and built an entirely new ventilator, named “CoVent,” after a plea from UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
“This new device can be manufactured quickly, efficiently and at volume,” Dyson continued.
The new ventilator has been designed to “address the specific needs” of coronavirus patients.
A spokesperson for the Dyson company, best known for its vacuum cleaners and hand dryers, said the ventilators would be ready by early April.
Dyson has wealth worth $10 billion according to Bloomberg.
The billionaire will also donate 5,000 units to the international effort to tackle the pandemic.
“The core challenge was how to design and deliver a new, sophisticated medical product in volume and in an extremely short space of time,” he added. “The race is now on to get it into production.”
Healthcare workers in many parts of the world are struggling for enough critical supplies, masks, gloves and ventilators, to deal with the surge of patients battling from the highly contagious virus.
In the United States, Ford Motorcars has announced that it’s working with 3M and GE Healthcare to produce medical equipment including ventilators and protective gear.
General Motors and Tesla have also pledged to make ventilators.
