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Last week, LHSC contacted Fanshawe’s respiratory therapy program to see if there was a willingness to collaborate, Wall said. On Tuesday, Fanshawe announced it was closing all its campus locations in Southwestern Ontario and encouraged students in its residences to return home.

Leaving the respiratory therapy department’s ventilators locked behind closed doors on a shuttered campus didn’t make any sense, Wall said. Faculty members loaded up the ventilators in a truck Wednesday and moved them to Victoria Hospital, Wall said.

“We stepped up and we thought this is a great way for our program, our faculty, our college to support our community with a potential local crisis,” Wall said. “I’ve worked in health care many years and I understand that this is such a vital resource. . . . I was incredibly proud of how Fanshawe came together to get this done so quickly.”

Ventilators have an important role to play in treating critically ill patients. Some countries, overwhelmed by skyrocketing coronavirus cases, struggle to amass enough machines to treat the most ill patients.

With more than 31,000 confirmed cases and 2,500 deaths, Italy is the hardest-hit country in Europe, the new epicentre of the global pandemic. Because of a critical shortage of ventilators, doctors are having to ration their use based on their judgment of patients’ survival chances. Meanwhile, Italy has assigned 30 of its military technicians to work at Siare Engineering International Group, a private electromedical supply firm that makes ventilators, whose factory is near Bologna.

While not everyone who falls ill with COVID-19 – the respiratory illness triggered by the novel coronavirus – requires mechanical ventilation, some do.