The race for artificial respirators, an impossible mission?

Audio 04:46

By: Dominique Baillard Follow

After the mask race, it is now the race for respirators that haunt governments around the world. To make up for this shortage, all good wills are put to work, with a special effort from the automotive industry.

Publicity

Because the use of this equipment is a matter of life and death when respiratory distress occurs in a patient of the Covid-19. The artificial assistance provided for several weeks by this device is today his only chance of recovery. With the ultra-rapid spread of the virus, most hospitals are already short of respirators. To avoid the doctor managing the shortage by screening patients, France wants to triple its fleet of respirators. In the great East of France, one of the epicenters of the coronavirus, hospitals have still not received the precious devices promised. Worldwide needs are in the hundreds of thousands. The good news for European countries is that it is still equipment produced in large quantities near their homes.

But demand far exceeds existing industrial capacities.

Even by running the workshops 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Air Liquide is the only French supplier. The leading European producers are German, Swedish and Swiss. The German Drägerwerk, one of the world leaders, has now quadrupled its production and recruited 500 people to cope with the influx of orders; he will be able to deliver 10,000 respirators to his country plus 10,000 ordered by foreign governments. But its director recognizes that he will not be able to honor the other requests. The demand is exponential. Especially in the United States. There is an American industrial sector, but here too undersized to meet immediate demand. New York City alone wants to buy 30,000 respirators. It would take 80,000 in a row across the United States.

To overcome this insufficiency, manufacturers of all stripes compete in ingenuity

In Italy a company specialized in 3D manufactures valves adapted to diving masks offered by Decathlon which are thus transformed into makeshift respirators. The Briton Dyson, famous for his vacuum cleaner, developed his own respirator in ten days, he plans to produce 15,000. In the United Kingdom, aeronautics and the automobile are also taking up the challenge, at least 10,000 other devices could come out of their workshops. The auto industry conversion is most advanced in the United States. Tesla, Ford, and General Motors have partnered with American medical device manufacturers to produce on a large scale.

Conventional manufacturers are skeptical about the effectiveness of this general mobilization

First because they fear the shortage of intermediate products for their own workshops. Even with the best will in the world, it takes time especially to build a sector. When General Motors receives its inputs it will be at the end of April, the peak of the coronavirus will already be crossed in New York. After denying the problem, and therefore wasting a lot of time, Donald Trump released the " Defense production act " last Friday to force companies to engage in this battle. Now the US administration is dithering with General Motors over money. She suspects the builder of wanting to make profits on this war effort. The American administration is in fact totally subject to the interests of the private sector. She has been looking for twenty years to build a stock of respirators to prepare for a pandemic. The contracts signed to obtain cheap devices have all ended, one supplier has favored the delivery of the most expensive devices, the other has been bought by a competitor unwilling to see the development of a low-cost sector.

►In short

To everyone's surprise, Chinese activity has already rebounded strongly

The PMI index, which gives an idea of ​​the industrial order book, is back in the green this month. It was at 35 in February, a historic low, here it is at 52. Above 50 it means that the activity is expanding. Perhaps such a performance is fleeting. Chinese officials say their economy is still not stabilized.

Newsletter With the Daily Newsletter, find the headlines directly in your mailbox

Follow all international news by downloading the RFI application

• Coronavirus
• Health and Medicine
• Containment
• France

On the same subject

Coronavirus: Faced with the pandemic, the world is trying to make up for the lack of respirators

Coronavirus: Johnson refuses to join EU program to acquire respirators