A modification to the Maquet Flow-i anaesthesia machine for ICU ventilation

Andrew J Robinson; William London; Lazslo Kotan; Warwick Downing

The SARS-CoV-2 infection COVID-19 has expanded worldwide since its lowly beginnings as a zoonotic infection in or near Wuhan, PRC (Andersen et al., 2020) sometime in late 2019. It is currently a WHO declared pandemic and wreaking havoc with the health and economic stability of the planet (WHO, 2020). Unchecked, it has the capability to cause millions of deaths worldwide. WHO and most local public health responses throughout the world hves concentrated on 'flattening the epidemiological curve'. An exponential increase of SARSCoV-2 virus spread leads to unprecedented demand for critical care services. Flattening the curve is an attempt to reduce the mortality rate and avoid completely overwhelming healthcare systems. An anticipated side effect of 'flattening the curve' is, however, sustained demand for Intensive Care services extending over a long period of time for those nations unable to reduce spread early on. While the risk of an individual patient needing respiratory care can appear low on first examination, across a population COVID-19 produces a large . CC-BY 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.