Billionaire inventor Sir James Dyson has designed a ventilator to help tackle the coronavirus pandemic.

The Government has ordered 10,000 of the units created by Sir James’ team.

Another 5,000 will be donated to international relief against Covid-19.

The Dyson “CoVent” was a response to a plea to industry from Prime Minister Boris to create a machine to help patients.

Sir James said his engineers had worked around the clock for the last ten days on the design.

The company is now waiting for regulatory approval before manufacture can begin.

The “CoVent” was co-designed with the Cambridge-based science engineering firm TTP.

The brief was for a new ventilator that had to be safe, effective, efficient in conserving oxygen and portable.

It also had to be bed-mounted, easy to use and not require a fixed air supply.

In an email to staff, Sir James said:

“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.

“Ventilators are a regulated product so Dyson and TTP will be working with the Medicine and Healthcare Regulatory products Agency and the Government to ensure that the product and the manufacturing process is approved.

“We have received an initial order of 10,000 units from the UK Government which we will supply on an open-book basis.

“We are also looking at ways of making it available internationally.”