NASA has developed a critical high-pressure ventilator in just 37 days amid the coronavirus crisis.
The White House announced the news on Twitter Saturday, acknowledging the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California “usually builds spacecraft, not medical products” – but they made an exception during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Thanks to innovation from men & women at JPL, they built a new ventilator!” the statement read.
“Designed to use fewer parts & parts that aren’t used in existing designs, it won’t interrupt the current supply chain.”
On Thursday, NASA said their respiratory machine dubbed VITAL (Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally) “passed a critical test” in a statement.
The ventilator was tested at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in NYC on a “high fidelity human patient simulator.”
The school’s Director Matthew Levin said they were “very pleased” with the results of the test.
Levin said the machine “performed as expected under a wide variety of simulated patient conditions.”
“The team feels confident that the VITAL ventilator will be able to safely ventilate patients suffering from COVID-19 both here in the United States and throughout the world,” Levin said.
The news comes after NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine met with President Trump on April 24 to discuss technology that could help during the outbreak.
NASA confirmed they were “answering the call to combat coronavirus” by developing multiple products in a YouTube video today.
They have also manufactured an oxygen hood coronavirus patients could use to lesson the reliance on ventilators and a protective canopy, which enables medics to treat people with the virus inside it.
“NASA is an amazing little agency that does astonishing things every day,” Bridenstine told reporters in a video press briefing.
“And now we’re using that capability to respond to this pandemic using a whole of government approach.”
More to follow…
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