The Global Respirator Gap Is 10 Times The Existing One: Chinese Manufacturers' Overseas Orders Surging, And The Threshold Of Cross Boundary Production Is High.

"The order is already full, and now it can not be produced." A domestic ventilator enterprise in Southern China said to the twenty-first Century business reporter.

With the new stage of combating the outbreak of new crown pneumonia, the demand for ventilators abroad has also soared, and the ventilator is huge and expensive (usually 2.5 -5 US dollars). Ordinary hospitals will be equipped only in ICU. With the sharp increase in the number of severe cases of new crown pneumonia in the world, ventilators are extremely scarce, and European and American countries are beginning to buy breathing machines from China.

Mask, the founder of Tesla who had previously announced that he wanted to produce ventilators, chose to purchase 1255 ventilators from China directly to Losangeles for emergency treatment. For these automobile and aerospace enterprises, cross boundary mass production of ventilators and other medical equipment are also faced with many technical barriers, spare parts supply and many other problems. At present, the number of orders for many ventilators in China is full, and it is hard to find a "machine". It is reported that the global demand for ventilators has reached at least 10 times the number of hospitals in the world.

Tang Jun Yu, director of the Department of critical care medicine of Guangdong General Hospital, told reporters on twenty-first Century economic report that the reason for the shortage of ventilators in foreign countries may be the new crown pneumonia pandemic, resulting in a sharp increase in the number of patients requiring the use of ventilators, and a shortage of short time supplies, thus increasing the demand for ventilators in Europe and the United States.

Global ventilator emergency

Because the new crown virus has a strong "aggressive" effect on the lungs of infected people, when the new crown virus attacks the lungs of patients, triggering complications such as pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome, the use of respirator to assist or replace respiration can ensure the blood oxygen content of patients and avoid respiratory system and important organ failure. Ventilator is indispensable for the treatment of new crown patients. Function.

With the outbreak of the global epidemic, the "lifesaving" ventilator is also in a global shortage.

An EU document shows that the supply of personal protective equipment and other medical devices in Europe, especially the supply of ventilators, is still worrying. The traditional supply chain can only meet about 10% of the demand. The UK ventilator gap is expected to reach 20 thousand units. The British government issued an official statement calling for domestic manufacturers to support the production of respirators and spare parts.

At present, all hospitals in the United States have about 160 thousand ventilators. The governor of New York said he needed 30000 ventilators, and now there are only 5000 to 6000 ventilators in the state.

With that, orders in the domestic market surged, and now orders for ventilator are at the end of April. Nissan can be upgraded from the 300 before the epidemic to the limit of more than 700 Nissan. MINDRAY medical also received tens of thousands of overseas orders for ventilators.

Since January 20th, the Beijing Yi An medical system Limited by Share Ltd has been working day and night. After meeting the domestic demand two weeks ago, the company's production line has been making every effort to meet the demand for ventilator orders from abroad. In the case of workers working in three shifts or even R & D personnel on the production line, the company's machines are running continuously.

Li Kai, assistant director of Yi An medical company, said: "we have thousands of orders waiting to be delivered. The problem is how quickly we can produce these ventilators.

For a serious patient, a ventilator can decide life and death. Last weekend, Drew Cuomo, Changan, New York, said that the state may need 30 thousand ventilators, and the state has only five thousand or six thousand. "The key is respirator, ventilator, respirator," he said. This is the most urgent need. "

According to the American College of critical care medicine, 960 thousand patients in the United States will need ventilators because of the infection of new crown virus, but there are only about 200 thousand such machines in the United States. In Italy, a severe shortage of ventilators has forced doctors to give up treatment for some patients.

"All Chinese ventilator manufacturers have reached their capacity limit and are busy coping with overseas demand," said Wu Chuanpu, director of supply chain of China Medical equipment business platform, Baden medical.

According to Wu Chuanpu, the orders placed by these manufacturers can allow them to be shipped at full load to May. He said that he would still receive about 60 to 70 new orders per day, and buy hundreds or even thousands of machines for every order. Many of the orders come from governments.

Wu Chuanpu said that unlike respirators and thermometers, which can quickly increase the output of medical supplies, breathing machine production has a higher threshold, which makes it more difficult to rapidly expand production.

Cross boundary production is not easy.

In the past, in the field of ventilator production, PHILPS, Medtronic, resi Mai, Mai Ke Wei, GE and other medical equipment giant took the lead.

Under the huge gap, many cross-border players also temporarily "save the field" to supplement the production gap. GM said it is working with Ventec, a medical device manufacturer, to produce ventilators at GM's Indiana parts plant.

Italy luxury car brand Ferrari and its parent company Fiat Chrysler are also working with Siare Engineering, the country's largest ventilator manufacturer, to help Siare Engineering increase production.

The British government has turned to a wartime solution and invited manufacturers such as Rolls-Royce and Rolls-Royce to produce such key equipment. Johnson asked manufacturers to "tackle this challenge immediately" and provide skills and expertise from all aspects of design, testing, production and transportation.

US President Trump said Tesla, Ford motor and general motors were allowed to produce ventilators and urged them to speed up their efforts to help solve this problem. Musk also said that he and Medtronic medical technology company (Medtronic) on ventilator manufacturing were discussed, and there seems to be a plan to carry out cross industry production cooperation. Honda, Nissan, Fiat Chrysler, Airbus and other related enterprises have also indicated that they are actively exploring ways to maximize support for the production of medical equipment such as ventilators.

However, in order to achieve mass production in a short time, these "cross-border" enterprises also need to face many problems such as transformation of production lines, technical barriers, parts supply, quality inspection and approval.

There is a certain technical content in the production of respirator, and the first difficulty that lies ahead of these enterprises is technological breakthroughs.

The production of a ventilator can not make any mistakes in hardware and software. If any part of the pressure drive system, patient circuits, filters and valves fails, the whole machine will not be able to operate. As the "brain" of the ventilator, the algorithm needs continuous optimization to achieve the best condition.

Even for professional medical device manufacturers, it may take up to 40 days to produce a respirator. It may take 18 months to achieve mass production from zero start cross-border enterprises.

A spokesman for Medtronic, a medical technology company, once said, "breathing machine manufacturing is a complex process, requiring skilled and professional staff and strict supervision system to ensure patient safety."

In addition, in addition to the long production line preparation and technical barriers to break through, vehicle manufacturers can also face the problem of supply chain links. According to MIT Technology Review, proprietary materials needed for the manufacture of ventilators and professional production personnel are "not immediately available by Tesla or Space X".

Even if the ventilator is produced, cross boundary enterprises are also facing the last step of the ventilator pushing to the market quality inspection and approval process, which will undoubtedly take some time. In the US, for example, the ventilator should be approved by FDA. In China, a medical device operator is also required to operate a ventilator production enterprise.

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