Companies are now racing to contribute to the fight against the coronavirus pandemic and even companies that produce high-end gaming PCs like Maingear and Taiwan-based electronics maker Foxconn, who assembles Apple's iPhone.
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Maingear Joins The Fight Against COVID-19
Maingear is known for building custom, high-end PCs that gamers all over the world enjoy. Now, they are focusing on something different while keeping the production closed for the time being. Making ventilators to aid in the effort against the viral pandemic that is the coronavirus is now a priority.
They have located a portion of its manufacturing capability to assist New York City's overwhelmed number of COVIDI-19 cases and their need to have more ventilators as the country now has the most amount of cases since the outbreak has begun.
The New Jersey-based company has said that its Maingear LIV ventilator, which was developed in-house alongside medical advisers within just a few weeks, is made by using off-the-shelf parts which can be "produced for approximately a quarter of the price ventilators usually cost. Ventilators typically cost upwards of $50,000, while theirs only amounts to about $7,500.
The Verge asked the company and will be ready to ship out their ventilators as little as two weeks, pending FDA clearance.
Maingear has said that LIV features an "easy to use touchscreen interface" by using Nvidia Shield tablet as well as custom software and "redundant power supplies," the latter is going to be used as a failsafe. It looks like a custom PC chassis that is retrofitted to be of use as a ventilator. However, Rahul Sood, an adviser to Maingear, said it accomplished two things. The first is creating a ventilator that is easy to use, and the second makes it as affordable as possible.
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Foxconn Makes Ventilators Instead of Apple's iPhone
Foxconn has partnered with the medical device company called Medtronic to create ventilators in their Wisconsin plant. Omar Ishrak, Medtronics CEO, told CNBC. He also noted that the factory would begin to make the ventilators based on the open-sourced PB-560 design in the course of four to six weeks.
Reuters was also able to confirm the story from Foxconn, and the report suggests that they were indeed working together in the project.
Foxconn's factory over at Wisconsin Valley Science and Technology were supposedly meant to create LCD screens when it would open in May.
The coronavirus pandemic has now infected more than 1 million people all over the world and has caused over 83,000 deaths. It's up to the people who can make a difference as well as the help of everyone to keep the virus at check. Companies like them Maingear, Foxconn, and a host of different companies are the ones who are compensating for the lack of medical equipment that the frontline needs and will continue to do so until the threat has passed.
