Coronavirus doctor's diary: The oxygen supply problem
Searching for ways round the problem, Tom has been working with Leeds University on a 3D-printed valve that could be attached to the hospital's ventilators to reduce the amount of oxygen they use.
But he also began looking at CPAP machines used to treat sleep apnoea at home. These maintain air at a continuous pressure, inside a mask, to keep the user's airways open - they have to be repurposed to provide oxygen for use in the hospital, but they use much less of it than standard hospital ventilators.
"They said, 'Yes we've got 2,000, how many do you want?''' he says."And so our plan is to start with 100 and to see whether, if we use these early enough during a patient's stay, we can prevent people deteriorating and needing to go on to the more complex ventilators, and needing to come to the intensive care unit."
We've been testing them over the weekend, and there's evidence from China and from the US that they seem effective. They just help inflate your lungs and that seems to be beneficial.Image copyrightDebbie Horner, the consultant in charge of Covid-19 intensive care planning - who is now back at work after contracting the virus herself - says hospital doctors around the country took a sharp intake of breath when they heard that Italy was running out of oxygen.
"One of the issues that originally we didn't realise we were going to have is actually the diameter of the pipes coming into the hospital," she says."So it's not just the total amount of oxygen that the hospital has, it's also how much can you get to the bedside? Or how many bedsides can you get oxygen to at any one time?"
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