Automotive giant General Motors is stepping in to help a medical supply company with deep Nevada roots produce ventilators in Reno.

On Tuesday Hamilton Medical announced it would be working with GM to produce ventilators as part of a more than $550 million contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Hamilton's contract, worth $552 million, is for 14,115 ventilators produced by July 3, with 850 by May 8 and 4,404 by May 22, according to the federal government's announcement.

The value of the contract, which Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., announced Friday, is comparable to nearly eight months of casino win across Washoe County, or about half of monthly casino win statewide.

“Since the global crisis began, Hamilton Medical has responded with urgency to help hospitals, health care workers and patients,” said Bob Hamilton, CEO of Hamilton Medical, in a written statement. “We are proud that with the new production facility, we can now supply even more life-saving equipment to the U.S.”

More:Reno is home to one of the world's largest ventilator companies. We talked with its CEO about COVID-19

The federal government is scrambling along with state and local governments and hospitals to bolster supplies of critical medical supplies to help communities cope with the COVID-19 virus pandemic.

While much of the focus is on producing and acquiring simple supplies such as N95 masks, there's also demand for ventilators that can help patients enduring the most serious symptoms, which include inability to breathe and even death.

"The thousands of ventilators delivered to the Strategic National Stockpile starting this month, continuing through the spring and summer, will mean we have more capacity to respond to the pandemic as it evolves," HHS secretary Alex Azar said.

So far, nearly 600,000 people in the U.S. have tested positive and more than 24,000 have died, although official numbers likely underestimate the true count due to testing supply shortages.

Hamilton is one of the world's leading ventilator manufacturers with a factory in Switzerland and ties to Reno, where it has an import and distribution center, dating back to the 1980s.

Under terms of the new deal it will add manufacturing to its Reno operations and the partnership with GM will help the company ramp up production more quickly. The company already has an estimated 50,000 to 80,000 ventilators produced in Switzerland in use worldwide.

Production in Reno will be in addition to what the company builds in Europe.

“The best approach is to create a new production line with a new supply chain – so that we could avoid diverting from existing production needed around the world or worsening the ongoing supply chain bottlenecks,” Hamilton said.

GM is expected to help with lining up the supply chain for the complex and costly medical devices and by applying production line expertise to the new Reno factory to produce the HAMILTON-T1 critical care ventilator.

“GM has donated their expertise, and their people work side-by-side with Hamilton Medical teams from Switzerland and Nevada,” Hamilton said.

Machines are expected to be in production from Reno by the end of the month and the company is already hiring and training hundreds of workers, according to its announcement.

“We needed a partner, so we turned to General Motors,” Hamilton said. “They jumped in immediately. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Benjamin Spillman covers the outdoors and environment in Northern Nevada, from backcountry skiing in the Sierra to the latest from Lake Tahoe's ecosystem. Support his work by subscribing to RGJ.com right here.