It looks like the cabinet office, tasked with managing a competition to manufacture 10s of thousands of ventilators for covid-19 has finally realized that "no vent is better than a bad vent".

Today they have changed the spec!

/1 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-ventilator-supply-specification?utm_source=f7e82860-63ae-420e-bec1-3e594aab1933&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=govuk-notifications&utm_content=immediate">https://www.gov.uk/governmen...

Here is the key phrase that says bad vents will do harm.

Where as 2 weeks ago the govt was telling the consortia developing vents that speed was the priority. So of course they cut out features: "must" features only, and cutting the "should".

/2

This weekend, some consortia that had been paid millions by the govt to prepare for manufacture were told their vents were too basic, despite having met the minimum requirements of the spec.

This story from one if those consortia broke yesterday.

/3 https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-ventilator-idUKKCN21U0UI">https://uk.reuters.com/article/u...

This decision actually seems sensible. It is indeed important to have ventilators that meet the clinical need.

The question it poses is: why was the original UK ventilator competition spec too low for what was needed based on experience from China and italy?
/4

And why did the UK govt focus so much on the role of companies like Dyson, JCB, Rolls Royce, and the F1 teams which have never made a ventilator?

This is a specialist area....

/end