Coronavirus updates

NHS doesn't have enough ventilators

As Boris Johnson urges manufacturers to quickly build more ventilated beds amid the coronavirus pandemic, a former NHS official said it is 'unforgivable' that not enough are available and the UK faces a huge challenge getting more. Engineers have already been asked to draw up plans to quickly produce more ventilators in the country, amid concerns that critical care facilities will come under intense pressure as the Covid-19 crisis intensifies. Negotiations are also taking place with private health firms about access to their hospital beds. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the thing the NHS 'needs more than anything else' is ventilators – which he admitted are 'complicated' to create – and the government has been buying as many as possible, while producing more too. He said he could not make guarantees that everyone who requires a ventilator will get one, saying: 'We don't make guarantees in healthcare.'

When asked by Sky's Sophy Ridge about stocks, Mr Hancock said: 'We start with around 5,000 ventilators, we think we need many times more than that and we are saying if you produce a ventilator then we will buy it. No number is too high.'

He added: 'We've been talking to a whole host of companies about it and the Prime Minister is hosting a conference call today with them to say very clearly to the nation's manufacturers ventilators are the thing that we are going to need and frankly right across the world, the demand for them is incredibly high so it is not possible to produce too many. 'So anybody who can should turn production and their engineering minds over to the production of ventilators.' For the latest coronavirus updates and coverage in the UK and around the world click here. Chairman of the British Medical Association, Dr Chaand Nagpaul, said the UK has about a 'quarter of the critical care beds that Germany has' and that the country's 'starting position unfortunately has been far worse than many other of our European nations'.

Dr Nagpaul said the UK's lack of ventilators when compared to other countries is 'a result of a decade of under-funding'. He told Sky: 'It's really important that we now see transparently what plans the Government has to expand that capacity... Of course I'm worried, I mean I said two weeks ago that this situation could change on a daily basis and in fact that is exactly what has happened.'

He added: 'And now what, therefore, we need to do, is make some really decisive decisions on how that limited resource is used in the best possible way for those who are going to need it. 'And that may require, and it should require actually, some major decisions on ceasing non-urgent routine care, a mass move towards many more consultations occurring remotely.' Former NHS trust chairman Roy Lilley said the UK currently has about 4,000 intensive care beds and getting hold of more is a 'real problem', as the rest of the world is also 'scrambling' to buy them. Mr Lilley told Sky News: 'This is capital equipment and the hospitals won't have been buying it, neither will it have been bought from the centre, so suddenly we're in a scramble to buy ventilators in the same way that every hospital in Europe and the rest of the world is'.

peace out and stay safe 🤙
~careflower

(I was looking at the comments and there are people from America reading this!! I've only met 3 Americans in my life, and even then i've only talked to them for a second. This is really exciting for me!!!)

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