Breathing new life in to the fight against COVID-19

Robert Lawton, Business Development director at Coventry-based Lawton Tubes, a fourth-generation family-owned business with a 100-year history which is reportedly the UK’s largest medical gas copper tube distributor, describes some of the company’s recent work supplying such tubing to Nightingale Hospitals, and the lengths its staff went to ensure that demand was promptly met, and that oxygen reached the patients that needed it.

Nobody could have predicted what 2020 had in store for us, with COVID-19 creating the largest global pandemic in living memory. The sudden onset of the virus in so many countries put massive pressure on national health systems in every corner of the world, and prompted many governments to explore new ways of treating huge volumes of patients outside of traditional hospitals. In England, seven Nightingale Hospitals were established to create additional capacity in areas that were under significant medical pressures, and these impressive facilities were devised and built in record time

It quickly became apparent that the one thing that COVID-19 patients relied heavily on for their care was oxygen, and all these temporary ‘super hospitals’ needed to create a safe and secure supply to what would amount to thousands of beds. All of this was played out against a backdrop of urgent timescales and lead times that had never previously been achieved. People’s lives depended on the oxygen supply, and UK industry reacted.