British manufacturer Dyson, best known for its bag-less vacuum cleaners, has designed and built a new ventilator in just 10 days.

It's called “CoVent,” and was designed and manufactured for the UK government as Great Britain attempts to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Ventilators are proving essential to helping the worst affected to breathe by transferring oxygen into the lungs and removing carbon dioxide from them.

As The Guardian reports, 10,000 ventilators will be supplied by Dyson to the British government, which is trying to increase the total number it has available from just over 8,000 to at least 30,000. Hundreds of engineers are reportedly working to build the ventilators from scratch, but the devices are still yet to pass medical tests. Nevertheless, unnamed Dyson workers told the BBC that they have a “working prototype, designed and built from scratch, which has been tested on humans and is ‘ready to go.’”

Although Dyson has no direct medical expertise there is crossover between the company’s existing products and this new design, such as “digital motors, battery packs, airflow analysis and high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters.” Dyson is not working alone, though. It has partnered with the Technology Partnership — described by The Guardian as a " Cambridge-based melting pot of scientists and innovators" — some of which do have medical expertise.

"This new [ventilator] can be manufactured quickly, efficiently and at volume," CEO James Dyson said in a company-wide email, according to CNN, and the new ventilator can "address the specific needs" of coronavirus sufferers. "The core challenge was how to design and deliver a new, sophisticated medical product in volume and in an extremely short space of time. The race is now on to get it into production" Dyson also said.

That race, however, is a “marathon, not a sprint,” according to NHS Providers chief executive Chris Hopson. Speaking on the BBC's Today programme, he said that the “ventilators that are currently being procured and ordered from around the world will be very helpful, although the lack of ventilation available right now is a real issue."

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