As it is well known that Sweden has few ICU beds, it is a bit ironic that one of the worlds largest manufacturers of ventilators, Getinge (22% market share in 2019 for ICU ventilators), is a Swedish company, with a factory in Solna, Stockholm, right in the heart of Sweden's covid-19 epicenter. Getinge is now increasing ventilator production by 160%, from 10,000 to 26,000 for 2020. Most of this will be for export.
As a Swede one could have some objections to this, "hey let's keep all those ventilators for our selves", but actually I do believe that protectionism is one of the greatest dangers right now as it seems everyone is hogging medical equipment for themselves, frankly at the cost of lives in other areas of the world. Like it or not, things are connected all over the world and perhaps now isn't the best time to try to change that overnight.
"A better answer to the ventilator shortage as the pandemic rages on:"
https://www.weforum.org/agenda...
That article is also referencing the idea of possible even using hand pumps as an alternative to ventilators. I have no idea if that could actually work or not, but I find it interesting:
"The 1952 Copenhagen poliomyelitis epidemic provided extraordinary challenges in applied physiology. Over 300 patients developed respiratory paralysis within a few weeks, and the ventilator facilities at the infectious disease hospital were completely overwhelmed. The heroic solution was to call upon 200 medical students to provide round-the-clock manual ventilation using a rubber bag attached to a tracheostomy tube. Some patients were ventilated in this way for several weeks"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
