U.S based car manufacturer Ford Motor Co. (F) has announced its partnership with health care unit of General Electric (GE) to produce 50,000 ventilators in 100 days so as to combat break out of deadly coronavirus in the United States.
In what stated as a non-alarming situation in the United States, Coronavirus has now emerged as a great pandemic and a national threat to the super power. Currently United States tops the world as the country with most recorded coronavirus infections notwithstanding the cases are spiking day in day out.
These two companies will be producing the ventilators at a plant located in Michigan, after producing the first batch of 50,000 ventilators, the companies will be producing 30,000 each month, however this number might rise of fall depending on how the corona situation will be on the ground.
The ventilators in question will be assuming a design which GE’s Healthcare has been approved and licensed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
According to a joint statement by the two parties, the ventilators will be able to meet the needs of a coronavirus patients (assist in breathing) without electricity since they will be using air pressure to function.
Due to the spike in coronavirus patients in the United States, health care facilities especially those around highly affected areas like New York and Seattle area have been operating under pressure since the patients outnumbers the number of ventilators available in the healthcare facilities.
Last week, medical representatives in these facilities pleaded with the government and ventilators manufacturers to scale up production of the ventilators before things get out of hands.
Hospitals around New York are reported to be using one ventilator to serve two patients at a go due to the mismatch between coronavirus patients and the ventilators.
President Trump responded to the plead assuring he would invoke powers under the Defense Production Act and instruct to produce this ventilators as fast as it can be done.
Director of global manufacturing core engineering for Ford, Adrian Price, said they had already deployed 500 employees in the Michigan plant awaiting production to kick off. Additionally, Price assured the public all necessary measures had been taken to avoid spread of coronavirus among the workers.
