What is a ventilator, and what companies are trying to make them?
Since the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged the U.S., lawmakers, business leaders, and health care workers have sounded the alarm about the detrimental shortage of necessary medical equipment to treat a skyrocketing number of patients.
The ventilator, a life-saving machine that helps patients breathe, needed for the most severe cases of the respiratory illness COVID-19, has been a central part of the conversation. At the outset of the outbreak, the U.S. had about 160,000 ventilators according to a 2018 analysis — plus an additional 12,700 in a national strategic stockpile. But the Society of Critical Care Medicine has projected that as many as 960,000 people could need emergency ventilation during a severe pandemic. Read more
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