Various efforts included a Montreal-based competition that drew global competitors and a group of scientists and engineers involving Queen's University professor emeritus Art McDonald, co-winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in physics
Canada's race to procure ventilators for COVID-19 patients in the early days of the pandemic had researchers, scientists, industry and a notable astrophysicist working "night and day"to design machines that could be quickly manufactured domestically.
Still, by fall 2020 thousands of ventilators were set to be manufactured in response to multiple contracts that were awarded by the federal government in the spring. And while procurement is an essential part of emergency preparedness, some wonder if more effort instead should have been spent addressing what they consider a weakness in our health-care system — that of staffing and space.
"Without a doubt, I think is part of any sort of readiness or preparedness infrastructure but without adequate staff it's not really useful and we need to emphasize that human resources component more and more," said Murthy, who is a also a clinical associate professor at the University of British Columbia.
"We switched gears completely using our technical experience to produce something that was needed, and needed cheaply, with a small number of parts because parts were very difficult to get. We had a prototype running on the bench in 10 days," McDonald said of developments in Italy. Trudeau called for ventilators to be built domestically, "as many as possible, and as quickly as possible."
As part of its efforts to divest of surplus supplies, the government donated 539 ventilators to India, Pakistan and Nepal, the agency said, adding it worked with manufacturers to facilitate the training of local health-care clinicians and technicians as part of the support that was requested.
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