THE growing number of patients critically sick with the coronavirus is fueling demand for ventilators to at least 10 times of what’s available at hospitals around the world, said China’s top medical device maker.

Shenzhen Mindray Bio-Medical Electronics Co., along with other Chinese ventilator makers, has seen overseas orders surge as countries scramble for more of the machines used in intensive care units.

In severe cases, the availability of a ventilator to help a COVID-19 patient breathe can determine if he lives or dies.

“The demand is several times the orders we can take, the orders are several times our current capacity, and our capacity now is already several times what it used to be,” said Li Wenmei, the company’s board secretary, Wednesday.

As the global death toll from the coronavirus crosses 18,000, doctors from Milan to New York are desperately seeking ventilators.

Hospitals which usually have just a few of the machines now face the need for one per critically ill patient.

While U.S. President Donald Trump has given the go-ahead to automakers like Tesla Inc. to try to manufacture ventilators to make up the shortfall, the complex devices aren’t as easily churned out as other medical supplies like surgical masks or disinfectant.

Overall in the United States, the Society of Critical Care Medicine estimates that 960,000 patients would need ventilator support due to COVID-19, but the nation only has about 200,000 such machines.

In Italy, the country with the most number of fatalities from the pandemic, a severe ventilator shortage has forced doctors to triage patients.

Mindray, which makes as many as 3,000 ventilators a month, is now trying to delay delivery of orders to domestic clients so as to ship products to overseas buyers in more urgent need first, said Li.(SD-Agencies)