Tech company Bloom Energy has repaired 170 broken ventilators in California after transforming its manufacturing process.
Bloom Energy, which usually manufactures green-energy fuel cells, delivered 170 repaired ventilators in Los Angeles, California. An engineer at the company was able to teach himself how to dismantle and rebuild them in a day after downloading the service manual.
The broken ventilators have been in storage since the H5N1 bird flu outbreak of the mid-2000s. The tech firm is currently looking for other stockpiles of disused machines to repair.
On Saturday, California Governor Gavin Newsom paid a visit to Bloom Energy's manufacturing plant and said: "We got a car and a truck and had [them] brought here to this facility at 08:00 this morning."
"And Monday, they’ll have those ventilators back into Los Angeles all fixed. That’s the spirit of California," he announced.
Governor Newsom explained that the original manufacturers had initially told him it would take a month to fix 200 ventilators, which were used to help patients breathe if they are having difficulties due to Covid-19 or other diseases.
He told the tech company: "We challenge you to do more and do better."
Bloom Energy chief executive KR Sridhar said: "We think we can do hundreds of ventilators - close to 1,000 ventilators - a week of refurbishment. This is the fastest way - we can take existing ventilators that are out there, get them working, get them back to the hospitals."
Meanwhile in the UK, the government is seeking to produce thousands of new machines by partnering with manufacturing companies.
Mercedes F1 worked with University College London engineers and clinicians at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) to develop a breathing aid for coronavirus patients, which delivers oxygen to the lungs without the need for a ventilator.
Meanwhile, a consortium of UK industrial, technology and engineering businesses has been formed to manufacture medical ventilators for the National Health Service (NHS). Dubbed “VentilatorChallengeUK“, the consortium includes Airbus, BAE Systems, Ford, Rolls-Royce and Siemens.
