#ventilatorgate update: Where's the Dyson ventilator?

It is now a full month after the announcement that Dyson had been handed out a contract for the development of a new ventilator from scratch. In the absence of any recent official update, Dyson itself put out a nice video on April 14th stating that some units had been produced for regulatory inspection.

The head of the group delivering the Ventilator Challenge UK said earlier this week that manufacturing an existing model at scale was the right approach to the problem and that they had “began accelerating an effort to reach 1,500 a week”. I agree with that view, but accelerating an effort is one thing, reaching the target very different.

So far they have produced only 250 and “hundreds” will follow this week with maximum production achieved in early May.

I think that by taking stock of #ventilatorgate at the end of this week it is fair to say the following:

1. No new ventilator has had MHRA approval, let alone be produced and deployed at scale
2. As of April 21, Ventilator Challenge UK had produced a total of 250 ventilators, up from 30 in the first weekend of April
3. We have not hit the magical number of 18,000 ventilators available in the NHS (let alone the original target of 30,000) by mid-April