COVID Ventilators

Shortage

• 2010 survey reported U.S. hospitals had 62,188 full-featured mechanical ventilators on hand, but the numbers varied widely by state - [1]
• Doctors decide selection criteria for allocating limited medical equipment - [2]. Sadly - “This is a shift to caring for the population, where you look at the whole population of people who need care and make a determination about who is most likely to survive, and you provide care to them,” she said. “Those that have a less good chance of survival — but still have a chance — you do not provide care to them, which guarantees their death.”
• Most severe cases require ICU care, of which there are 200k beds in the USA.
• The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security estimates that 38 million Americans will need medical care for COVID-19, including as many as 9.6 million who will need to be hospitalized – about a third of whom might need ICU-level care. In a February presentation to the American Hospital Association, Lawler estimated that as many as 96 million Americans could be infected. - from 'https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2020/03/13/us-hospitals-overwhlemed-coronavirus-cases-result-in-too-few-beds/5002942002/'

See Also

• Open Source Venturi Mask Valve

Efforts

• 1 Million Ventilators - is this an open source project? https://helpwithcovid.com/projects/13-1-million-ventilators
• See other efforts at [3]
• Incentive challenge at Ennomotive - [4]
• Other efforts listed by Ennomotive - [5]

Suppliers

• Ventilator specialist Ventec