Instead of $20,000, they cost just $5,000.
Though hard-hit cities such as New York have so far managed to avoid the worst-case scenario seen in Italy, where some doctors were forced to choose which patients would get access to the life-saving devices and which would die, most hospitals still don’t have enough ventilators to deal with a surge in coronavirus cases. In countries such as South Sudan, where there are only four ventilators for the entire nation, the situation is even more dire. Part of the problem is that ventilators cost tens of thousands of dollars each, making it hard for hospitals to have a large enough supply for the chance of rare emergencies (and impossible for developing world hospitals to ever acquire them). Now the world is racing to make them cheaper.