Trudeau announces 30,000 made-in-Canada ventilators in coming ‘weeks, months’

The companies include Thornhill Medical, CAE, Ventilators by Canadians, and Starfish Medical.

Additionally, more than 20 companies are developing supply chains to ensure that vital medical goods such as personal protective equipment and test kits would not be in short supply.

A particularly vital piece of medical equipment are ventilators.

Ventilators are used to take over an ailing body's breathing process when diseases cause lung failure, helping save lives for the time being. This works by passing a tube down their windpipe and connecting it to the machine, which looks like a computer screen with tubes coming out of it.

It's estimated that one in six coronavirus patients become seriously ill, and that roughly one in twenty require a ventilator.

"The ventilator is the difference between life or death for people with severe COVID-19," said Brian Oliver, a respiratory disease researcher at University of Technology Sydney in Australia to CNET.

The Public Services and Procurement Minister Anita Anand said that 1,570 new ventilators had already been ordered. Data collected by the CBC shows that Canada currently has just over 7,752 ventilators across the country.

"We recognize that 30,000 ventilators is a large amount of ventilators, and we certainly we hope we don't get anywhere near that number. But, we find it much better to be prepared and to create these pieces of equipment that will be necessary in Canada and certainly elsewhere across the world," said the prime minister.

"We foresee those ventilators coming in a matter of weeks, some in a matter of months. But we know that creating these is going to be extremely important in handling the future paths of this epidemic."