As many of you will know there is a shortage in the UK of the ventilators that could save the lives of thousands of people suffering from coronavirus across the UK. A ventilation device has been designed by a senior consultant at Glangwili Hospital in Carmarthen and an engineering company nearby. The designed implement has been called a ‘Covid Emergency Ventilator’ and has been given the go-ahead by the Welsh Government and it is hoped that a hundred of them can be manufactured in just one day, something that could potentially save a huge number of lives.
The man behind the design is a consultant anaesthetist Dr Rhys Thomas and has said the device would not replace ICU ventilators but rather it could be used before patients required intensive care treatment. Dr Thomas hopes that in the majority of cases intensive care would not then be needed if they were treated with the Covid Emergency Ventilator first.
The new device came to fruition after just three days as a result of Dr Thomas’s military and civilian experience in anaesthetics and resuscitation. Dr Thomas said “I was desperately concerned about the lack of intensive care unit (ICU) ventilators to deal with the inevitable pandemic. Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price challenged me to come up with a simpler but potentially as effective device and put me in touch with Maurice Clarke of CR Clarke & Co – an engineering company specialising in thermoforming and plastic fabrication equipment. After designing, constructing and trialling several prototypes in just three days, we came up with a device that worked perfectly. It is simple and robust and specifically designed to work against Covid virus in a contagious environment.
Now that the production has been approved this Covid Emergency Ventilator will be made for and used by patients suffering with coronavirus in hospitals across Wales and hopefully sent to hospitals across the UK. Adam Price has described these developments as “a truly amazing achievement. I cannot praise too highly Dr Rhys Thomas for his skill, his dedicated staff at Glangwili Hospital who tested the device, as well as CR Clarke & Co for responding so swiftly”.
Editor-in-Chief | Carl D. Pearson has been involved in British politics and media from an early age, with the key knowledge of what it takes to run a news organisation for the 21st century. Mr Pearson, as Editor-in-chief, is responsible for supervising the daily tasks of publishing media and content to UNN’s website and various platforms.
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