Philips Respironics ramping up ventilator production, soon to include a lower-cost unit

A Dutch manufacturer says it hopes to triple the production of hospital ventilators being assembled in Murrysville and Carlsbad, Calif., between now and the end of September.

“In March, our production capacity was 1,000 ventilators per week. In two months, we hope to double that … and by the end of the third quarter, we should be at 3,000 per week,” Steve Klink, a spokesman for Philips Respironics, told the Tribune-Review from the company’s Amsterdam headquarters.

But the Trilogy Evo Universal ventilator — a low-cost “stockpile ventilator” Philips designed under contract with the U.S. government — isn’t among the devices going out the door. Instead, the company is busy making traditional hospital ventilators.

Demand for ventilators, sophisticated mechanical devices that force air into and carbon dioxide out of the lungs of people experiencing respiratory distress, has escalated dramatically with the spread of covid-19. In its most serious form, the viral illness can culminate in a severe pneumonia that requires the use of a breathing machine to survive.

Read more: https://triblive.com/news/world/phillips-respironics-says-it-is-ramping-ventilator-production-soon-to-include-a-lower-cost-unit/