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- The National Fan Project, a joint initiative between the government and companies, aims to build 10,000 non-invasive fans in SA factories in late June.
- The fans will be built according to a unique standard design, which will close this week.
- The design is expected to be fairly simple and not to use electricity.
- For more stories, go to the Business Insider home page.
South Africa should have the clinically approved standard design ready this week for a planned non-invasive respirator that will begin mass production before the end of the month.
South Africa’s National Fan Project (NVP), a joint initiative between government and business, aims to build 10,000 fans in SA factories by the end of June, using only parts and materials that are available in large quantities or that can be made locally.
So far, weapons maker Denel, home appliance group Defy and other companies plan to help produce fans.
Many proposed fan designs have been submitted to the NVP, Stavros Nicolaou, a top executive at the pharmaceutical company Aspen, said at a press conference Tuesday morning. But none of them has met the requirements of the doctors who are part of the NVP.
The NVP now has a design that doctors agreed on, and it will launch this week, Nicolaou said.
The NVP features a simple, non-invasive design that mixes pure oxygen with air and helps deliver that mixture to patients’ lungs by delivering it at a pressure above ambient. This, according to his clinical team, should help in most cases where Covid-19 patients require hospitalization, without the complexity of intubation systems, which would also slow manufacturing.
In practice, that means a hood, with a seal around the neck or shoulders and straps that run under each arm. The hood supply system can be connected to a separate oxygen cylinder or to a hospital pipeline oxygen supply. The exhaled air will be filtered for viruses, to prevent further spread of the new coronavirus in medical facilities.
Ideally, the system will not require electricity.
South Africa has around 6,000 ventilators available in public and private hospitals; The amount needed for local use is likely to depend on the extent to which the national closure and other measures to curb the spread of SARS-CoV-2 are successful.
READ | South Africa’s top scientists are tasked with manufacturing 10,000 fans by June
Nicolaou warned that South Africa can still expect an increase in Covid cases19, although “we hope it will be silenced.”
He warned that the plan for ventilator production will not be a “quick victory”, but should bear fruit in the medium term, hopefully in time for the peak of local infections.
Nicolaou spoke at a briefing organized by Business for South Africa, a new organization coordinating the corporate response to the Covid crisis19. He is the primary coordinator of health workflows in the organization, which includes testing, immunizations, and PPE.
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