Coronavirus Update: India's Low-Cost, Toaster-Sized Ventilators To The Rescue During The Crisis

Developed by a robot scientist and neurosurgeon in an effort to help India’s poor, the toaster-size ventilator device is giving a lot of hope when the country is suffering from a shortage of life-saving ventilator devices during the pandemic situation.

Ventilators are breathing machines that are used to assist the function of the lungs- they blow air into the lungs and help maintain proper levels of oxygen in the blood. Since the coronaviruses at its most lethal attacks the lungs, ventilator devices are very important to save the lives of COVID-19 positive cases, especially the critically ill.

With the surge in the number of COVID-19 cases amidst the nation-wide lockdown, the production of AgVa’s portable ventilator has shot up from 500 to 20,000 a month. Priced at approximately $2000, the portable ventilator from AgVa cost just a fraction of the conventional mechanical ventilators.

"There was no way we could have foreseen something as big as this," Aljazeera quoted the neurosurgeon Deepak Agrawal, who co-developed the device with robot scientist Diwakar Vaish.

Shortage of life-saving devices:

• To reduce the surge in the number of COVID-19 cases, the Indian government has banned all sorts of medical exports including that of ventilator devices.
• Per estimates, for the nation’s 1.3 billion population, there are hardly 48,000 ventilators.
• It is very much uncertain about how many of these breathing assistance machines are functional. But it is widely assumed that all of those available mechanical ventilators are being used in intensive care units on existing patients suffering from other ailments.

Everything you need to know about the AgVa’s new toaster-sized ventilator devices:

• It hardly weighs 7.7 pounds and can help move less critical COVID-19 patients back to their homes
• They are extremely easy to install and transport and are less power-consuming too.

"In case you want to convert a hotel into an ICU, you can simply put this device and start working as it doesn't require other infrastructure," NDTV quoted the co-scientist Diwakar Vaish.

Maruti Suzuki, the country’s biggest carmaker, has promised to help AgVa ramp up its production of the new portable ventilators after the government called on auto firms to contribute towards the country’s anti-coronavirus efforts.