full FT article here (its paywalled)
Ministers say 8,000 ventilators under order should be available for NHS use over the next few weeks. The British health service already has access to more than 8,000 ventilators, but it estimates a total of 30,000 are required.
Several companies have complained that offers were not taken up to provide some of the additional machines needed to save the lives of people with acute respiratory difficulties caused by Covid-19. “They could have had probably 500 ventilators if they got back to me straight away,” Andrew Rayner, managing director of MEC Medical, ventilator parts maker, told the Financial Times. “They’ve missed the boat.”
The European Commission rejected UK claims that an “initial communication problem” with Brussels meant that Britain missed out on participating in the EU joint procurement of ventilators, insisting that the UK was fully briefed on the plans.
Ministers are already facing criticism for the slow rollout of coronavirus testing for doctors and patients, and for earlier problems in the supply of protective equipment for medical staff. With medical equipment suppliers around the world overwhelmed by orders, the UK government has encouraged the development of new ventilators, increased production of models made in the UK, as well as imports from overseas. But device makers feel they have been sidelined in favour of big-name manufacturers with no experience in the field and unproven models.
Dyson this week said it had received a government order for 10,000 ventilators designed from scratch, contingent on passing regulatory tests. Another company, which asked not to be named, said it had written to the business department at the start of last week offering to provide hundreds of ventilators for $15,000 each, but had received no reply.
“My concern is that the government actions don’t match their words,” said one executive there. “Matt Hancock stated that ‘if you produce a ventilator then we will buy it'. Instead the criteria seems to be 'if you can develop a new ventilator in the UK then we will buy it’.”
A separate proposal that could have supplied the NHS with as many as 25,000 ventilators from China similarly went unanswered until it was too late, according to two companies behind it.
Direct Access said it first contacted officials on 16 March with a plan to obtain manufacturing slots of 5,000 machines per week, which it conceived with Dubai-based Topland General Trading, as first reported by the Nantwich News. “Had quicker action been taken when we first contacted the client, we would now have supplied up to 15,000 ventilators with a further delivery of 10,000 within the next two weeks,” said Andy Faulkner, owner of Topland. “And yet now, there are currently none on order with lead times two to three months away.”
Officials said the government was going directly to manufacturers and working through Foreign Office channels. One aide suggested the idea was to purchase from the source rather than through middlemen. British overseas embassies have even been roped into trying to find sources of medical equipment.
The commission said joint European procurement plans — which were publicly announced weeks ago — had been clearly set out to Britain and other governments. “The member states’ needs for personal protective equipment have been discussed several times in the meetings of the Health Security Committee, where the UK participated”, a commission spokesman said. “At these meetings, the commission stressed its readiness to further support countries with the procurement of medical countermeasures if needed; so member states and the UK had the opportunity to signal their interest to participate in any joint procurements.”
British references to communication problems have left officials in Brussels perplexed. The joint procurement plans have been publicly highlighted by commission president Ursula von der Leyen and other senior Brussels officials in recent weeks to show how the bloc is helping countries to fight the crisis. Brussels says that the centralised process has the advantage of driving down the cost of procurement through bulk orders. It also reduces pressure on overstretched national administrations.
Ms von der Leyen said this week that the first call for tender, which covered protective equipment and brought together 25 countries, had led to “concrete offers of considerable scale on shortest notice”. “This is EU solidarity in action. It shows that being part of the union pays off,” she said. The spelling of the chief medical officer’s name has been corrected in this article.
