Tomas Kapler is not an engineer by trade—he’s actually an online business consultant. But after learning about the ventilator shortage in northern Italy due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Czech businessman felt compelled to help—and bring others to the cause.
“It was a disturbing feeling for me that because of a lack of equipment the doctors had to decide whether a person gets a chance to live,” Kapler said. “That seemed so horrific to me that it was an impulse to do something.” And so he did. “I just said to myself: ‘Can we simply make the ventilators?’” he said.
Working around the clock, he brought together a team of 30 Czechs to develop a fully functional ventilator — Corovent. And they did it in a matter of days. Kapler is a member of an informal group of volunteers formed by IT companies and experts who offered to help the state fight the pandemic. The virus struck here slightly later than in western Europe but the number of infected was rising and time was running out. “It seemed that on the turn of March and April, we might be in the same situation as Italy,” Kapler said.
Read the full article on the New York Post.
(AP Photo/Petr David Josek)
