F1 team joins race to make breathing devices

Scientists at University College London have teamed up with the Mercedes Formula 1 motor racing team and a company called Oxford Optronix to create a breathing device to treat novel coronavirus patients instead of using ventilators, and have produced them in less than a week.

The apparatus, known as Continuous Positive Airway Pressure, or CPAP, delivers oxygen to the lungs and has already been widely used to help patients in Italy and China, but until now they have been in short supply.

Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has already granted approval and an initial batch of 40 devices has been delivered to University College London Hospital, with three more at other London hospitals.

If these are successful, the Mercedes factory will be able to make up to 1,000 units a day, starting next week.

“These devices will help to save lives by ensuring that ventilators, a limited resource, are used only for the most severely ill,” said Mervyn Singer, a critical care consultant at University

College London Hospital.

Andy Cowell, managing director of Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains, said his team’s contribution was part of a wider response across the F1 community to come together “to support the national need” in challenging times.

Andy Obeid, chief executive of Oxford Optronix, the company that will make the oxygen monitors, said: “By working flat out and mobilizing the support of every individual in my company as well as other small companies across the UK, we have accomplished something in five days that would normally take two years.”

The device fills the space between an oxygen mask and the need for full ventilation, which requires sedation and invasive measures. It sends oxygen straight to parts of the lung damaged by the disease, making breathing easier, and reports from Italy indicate that about 50 percent of patients given CPAP subsequently avoided needing ventilation.