Dyson to produce 10,000 ventilators for UK government

The UK government has contracted Dyson to produce 10,000 ventilators to help in its coronavirus effort. The firm, best known for its vacuum cleaners, said that it had designed a new type of ventilator in response to calls from the National Health Service (NHS).

Before the order can be carried out, the device must pass several stringent medical tests. Given the circumstances, these tests are expected to be carried out rapidly. Dyson says it has had hundreds of its engineers working day and night to design the ventilators from scratch.

The machines will be built at the company's UK base in Wiltshire, using aircraft hangers that stored parachutes during the Second World War.

Despite its evocation of the Blitz Spirit, no one should expect immediate results. It is expected that, even if regulatory approval goes ahead quickly, it could take a week or two to move from prototype to mass production.

Dyson is working alongside The Technology Partnership, a Cambridge-based medical company. But the collaboration is not the only one. 

While it is waiting for the new machines, the government has said it can "pick the low-hanging fruit" by buying up as many existing models as it can.

At present, the NHS has just over 8,000 ventilators. The government believes it can procure double that number from existing domestic and international suppliers. Nonetheless, it estimates that the NHS will need at least 30,000 ventilators to deal with the deluge of coronavirus victims.

The race to produce enough ventilators to keep patients with Covid-19 breathing has been running for weeks. 

Aside from Dyson, a consortium of manufacturers, including Airbus, Meggit and automotive components company GKN, is taking a very different approach.

While Dyson insiders told the BBC that they already have a working prototype which has been designed and constructed from scratch, tested on humans and is "ready to go", the consortium of medical, engineering and military companies is looking to ramp up production of an existing design.

In a sign of the current state of emergency, these processes, which would usually take months or years, has been reduced to a matter of days.

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