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<p>On 16 March, the Prime Minister launched the ventilator challenge to meet the UK’s
need for mechanical ventilators to fight COVID-19. Following a sift of more than 5,000
initial offers of help, Cabinet Office held preliminary talks with potential suppliers
and manufacturers and began a process to assess and develop shortlisted designs and
scale them up. The programme was headed by a team of officials from the Government
Commercial Function in the Cabinet Office. The NAO has published a comprehensive report
on the programme which can be found <a href="https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Investigation-into-how-the-Government-increased-the-number-of-ventilators.pdf"
target="_blank">here</a>.</p><p>During the process, 12 technical design reviews were
held with the teams of companies working together on designs, staffed by clinicians,
the MHRA and officials, the reviews looked at the feasibility of a design delivering
the full range of functionality required. Those design reviews reduced the list of
potentially viable designs down to fewer than 10, who were paired with companies able
to provide the components and help with the scale up. In the end around 100 companies
were involved in the manufacturing.</p><p>As of December, there were over 30,000 mechanical
ventilators available to patients across the United Kingdom. This compares to around
9,000 at the start of the pandemic in March 2020. The Chair of the Public Accounts
Committee, described this as a “benchmark for procurement”.</p><p> </p>
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