Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many additional companies have agreed to start producing ventilators for the covid-19 outbreak.

On 27 March the Government confirmed it had received a large number of offers from companies who can support in the supply of ventilators and ventilator components across the United Kingdom. They will be matching requirements and will reach out to companies individually.

There are currently three major companies supporting this effort which include:

- VentilatorchallengeUK - whose role is to help ramp up production of a proven ventilator design, which has been supplied by a leading UK medical company to help those suffering from the virus. They will be providing integrated, tested sub-systems and components, which makes best use of their strong project management and engineering skills, while saving significant time during final assembly of the ventilators;

- Dyson, the globally recognized appliance maker, is working with The Technology Partnership on a brand new ventilator design called the CoVent. This design is meant to be made quickly and at high volumes, and leverages Dyson’s existing digital motor design, as well as the company’s air purification products, to deliver safe and consistent ventilation for COVID-19 patients. Dyson is donating 5,000 CoVent ventilator units to the international effort, 1,000 of which will go to the UK and intends to fulfil a UK Government order of 10,000 more units; and

- GTECH - another UK home appliance and vacuum maker, is working to respond to the Government’s call for ventilator hardware. A request was received to build up to 30,000 ventilators. The company has developed a ventilator that can be made from parts easily obtained from abundant stock materials, or off-the-shelf pre-assembled parts. The company says that within a week or two it will be able to produce up to 100 units per day, if it can source steel fabrication and CNC machining suppliers.