Nobel Prize winner and Queen’s University professor emeritus of physics Art McDonald of Kingston is leading a team of scientists at national laboratories TRIUMF, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories in Chalk River and SNOLAB to develop ventilators for patients with COVID-19.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced during his daily news briefing from Ottawa on Tuesday that McDonald would lead the group to design and build 30,000 simple, portable and easy-to-use ventilators.
In an interview, McDonald said the international collaboration among 400 members in 14 countries that was studying dark matter is being repurposed to create ventilators.
McDonald, an astrophysicist who won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work showing the neutrinos have mass, said the goal is to develop a ventilator model to meet current needs that can be constructed quickly and reliably in Canada.
McDonald said the idea came from a principal colleague during the dark matter research, Cristiano Galbiati, a professor at Princeton University and an institute in Italy who lives in Milan.
Galbiati has family members in Italy who are doctors and spoke of the urgent need for ventilators in that country due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Italy has been hit hard by the pandemic and, as of Wednesday, had almost 18,000 deaths and more than 139,000 cases.
“He realized the skills that we had as a collaboration could be applied to the manufacture of ventilators,” McDonald said.
After a conversation with Galbiati on March 23, McDonald called all of the directors of the dark matter project and received an immediate positive response.
About 30 people are working, some at home as well as at Queen’s University, and are currently contributing to the final design of the ventilators. Queen’s faculty of medicine has offered medical resources the group can use, McDonald said.
“We now have a prototype produced by the manufacturer, something that will be going into the hospital (and) is being tested today,” he said.
McDonald said the group’s version is the size of a toaster oven and can be portable.
He also said the ventilator is close to United States Food and Drug Administration and Health Canada approvals.
“The regulatory agencies are being very, very co-operative in making sure that things are safe but also making sure that things that are capable of helping in this crisis that they’re approval processes move as quickly as they can,” he said.
McDonald said the group’s work will be published on the internet, allowing others to build their own ventilators.
“We’re trying to make all that we’re doing readily available to any company in the world that wants to try to manufacture this design,” he said. “The design itself is made from a limited number (30 to 40) of readily accessible parts.
“We’ve had a tremendous response also from the medical community who recognize the value of the concept of something simple enough and readily available enough that they can use more broadly.”
Two Ontario manufacturers, one in Markham and the other in London, are gearing up for a quick production, McDonald said.
With the help of the Italian manufacturer, McDonald hopes the two Canadian companies can start manufacturing the ventilators by the end of April.
McDonald said they may have to modify some of the parts from the Italian version, due to what’s available in the Canadian supply chain.
“We’re trying to stick as close as we can to the original design, which many tests are showing is doing extremely well. We’re expecting the production can be 1,000 units per week once we get rolling,” he said.
First, the group has to satisfy Canada’s requirement of 30,000 ventilators, but it could ship some ventilators to other countries if Canada doesn’t need all of them.
“We’ve already had many other countries contacting us about how they can access our information and start manufacturing internationally,” he said.
McDonald said the device would help patients who just need some breathing help as well as more serious cases.
McDonald said he and his colleagues are working from home and meet remotely.
“Sitting at home you feel, ‘If only I could help,’ but now it’s an actual opportunity to do so using the skills that you have,” McDonald said. “I can’t say enough about the dedication of the people around the world and particularly here in Canada. They simply want to help and, in a sense, everyone is just very pleased they can actually do something.
“We’re inspired to actually try to do something, first for Canada and for the longer term for the rest of the world as well.”