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Requirements set out by the U.K. government for hospital ventilators, as it seeks to address a shortage in the NHS, are not fit for treating coronavirus patients, according to a leading expert.
Dr. Alison Pittard, who heads up the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine, told the FT that the minimum specification would only be capable of providing care for patients for a "few hours" rather than a day or more.
Dr. Pittard says medical experts had told the government that ventilators should be good enough to provide long term care to coronavirus patients in intensive care.
She said: "If we had been told that that was the case — that the ventilators were only to treat a patient for a few hours — we'd have said: 'Don't bother, you're wasting your time. That's of no use whatsoever.'"
The U.K. has between 9,000 and 10,000 ventilators in operation, the Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said, with another 2,000 critical care beds with ventilators attached.
The government originally set a target of having 30,000 ventilators in operation which was later revised down to needing 18,000 in a "worse case" scenario.
They will be needed most in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, the government says, when the peak of cases arrives in the coming days and weeks.
Hancock had issued a "call to arms" last month, in a bid to drive ventilator production as well as other "critical" equipment for the NHS.
Calling on manufacturers to step up in the fight against the "biggest public health emergency in a generation", he told Sky News: 'If you produce a ventilator, we will buy it. No number is too high."
The Cabinet Office, which is helping to co-ordinate the procurement program, says it is working on several projects to acquire ventilators but that none had as of yet gained regulatory approval.
A spokesperson for the Cabinet Office told Newsweek: "The specifications for the Ventilator Challenge were drawn up and agreed by expert medical clinicians from the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) and the NHS.
"These specifications are regularly reviewed in light of the developing picture around what is needed to most effectively treat COVID-19, and we will continue to be led by the best available scientific and clinical evidence.
"As a result of the additional steps we've taken to increase the number of ventilators as well as the extraordinary efforts made by the public around social distancing, we are confident we will have sufficient supply of ventilators to meet demand."
The MHRA criteria for ventilators states: "Ventilators would be for short-term stabilization for a few hours, but this may be extended up to one-day use for a patient in extremis as the bare minimum function.
"Ideally it would also be able to function as a broader function ventilator which could support a patient through a number of days, when more advanced ventilatory support becomes necessary."
Among the companies tasked with mass-producing ventilators are the likes of Dyson, JCB, Rolls-Royce and McLaren.
