FDA Approves NASA-Designed COVID Ventilator  

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The U.S. space agency NASA has announced a new high-pressure ventilator developed by its engineers and designed specifically to COVID-19 patients has been approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The device, called VITAL — meaning “Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally” — was designed and built in 37 days by engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the city of Pasadena, California. Its designers say it is intended to be used exclusively on COVID-19 patients, freeing up traditional ventilators, which are built for a broad range of medical uses, and the most severe coronavirus cases. In critical cases, the coronavirus damages healthy tissue in the lungs, making it hard for them to deliver oxygen to the blood. Ventilators feed oxygen into the lungs of patients through a tube inserted down the throat. Among those involved in the project, mechatronics engineer Michelle Easter said scientists approached the project in the same way they would build a spacecraft, with an eye towards reliability yet simplicity. NASA says as a result, it is cheaper to build, composed of fewer parts and can be modified for use in field hospitals. The California Institute of Technology, which manages the JPL, is offering a royalty-free license to manufacturers worldwide and is also contacting the commercial medical industry to find manufacturers for the device. Easter says they’ve received interest from potential production partners around the world, not just in the U.S.   …

China Did Not Invite WHO to Join COVID-19 Investigation

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The World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday that it has not been invited by China to join the investigation into the cause of the coronavirus pandemic.WHO’s representative in Beijing Dr. Gauden Galea said he expected China would discuss collaborations with the organization in the “near future.””We know some national investigation is happening but at this stage we have not been invited to join. We are expecting to get, in the near future, a briefing on where that is and to discuss possible collaboration,” Galea said.The coronavirus disease COVID-19, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, has taken over 230,000 human lives worldwide, according to a collection of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, and confirmed infection cases have reached 3.2 million.Beijing has been criticized for lack of transparency in its handling of the pandemic, with the United States investigating whether the virus might have gotten out from a Wuhan biosecurity laboratory.The official tally of infections in Wuhan has been questionable from the very beginning with the government frequently changing its counting criteria at the peak of the outbreak.Meanwhile, China has dismissed the possibility that the coronavirus pandemic originated in that lab and it was not transmitted from animals to humans in Wuhan as commonly believed.Although the origin of COVID-19 is yet to be determined, some scientists suspect the virus was transmitted to humans from animals at a wet market in Wuhan. …