Nissan Plants in UK and Spain turn over production to help combat Covid-19

THE Hospital de Sant Pau, QEV Technologies, along with Nissan and the technology centre Eurecat have developed the Q-Vent respirator, to be used in hospitals throughout the world to fight coronavirus.

The Q-Vent has been authorised by the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS) and has been tested in the facilities of the Research Institute of the Hospital de Sant Pau Barcelona with excellent results.

Manufacturing of the Q-Vent has begun at the Nissan Barcelona Plant, with a capacity of 180 units per day, depending on orders and the first 20 units will be donated to the local health authority CatSalut.

This machine is relatively easy to produce and is inexpensive so is ideal for use in developing countries.

At the same time, in the UK, a team of volunteers has created a parts processing line in the final assembly area at the company’s Sunderland Plant to sort thousands of individual visor parts and pack them in sets of 125 for shipping direct to the UK’s National Health Service.

More than 77,000 visors have already left the plant with up to 100,000 being distributed each week from now on.

In the first phase of the project, the team took delivery of hundreds of boxes of visor parts from volunteers from across the country who have been using their 3D printers to make the PPE.

The visors are made up of three individual parts: an elastic headband, frame and see-through visor. These parts are sent to Nissan for packing and distribution in a ready-to-assemble format to an NHS procurement centre.

The visors are shipped in this format at the request of the NHS to minimise damage risk during transit, and to ensure the maximum volume can be dispatched at once.