ALBANY COUNTY — As New York, like the rest of the nation, is faced with a shortage of ventilators to help patients with severe cases of COVID-19 to continue to breathe, a Cohoes company has come up with a machine to fill the gap.

Tony Hynes, president and chief executive officer of Precision Valve & Automation, spoke at Tuesday’s county press conference about the bag valve masks his company plans to produce; within two weeks, Hynes said, he expects PVA can produce 100 of the portable respirators each day. 

In his Saturday press conference, Governor Andrew Cuomo said that, when the outbreak of coronavirus disease 19 peaks in New York — anticipated in two to three weeks — 140,000 hospital beds and 30,000 ventilators will be required. If the state is short on ventilators, the governor said, COVID-19 patients would need to use manually operated bag valve masks.

Cuomo had said members of the National Guard could sit next to each patient’s bedside to operate one of these machines. However, Hynes’s company, working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has come up with a way the portable respirators can operate on their own.

“We saw the governor’s pleas and decided we needed to act,” said Hynes. He also said, “The device will certainly keep someone alive” until a ventilator becomes available.

Ventilators cost in the neighborhood of $40,000 while these portable ventilators will cost under $8,000, Hynes said. He noted the PVC ventilators will not be as effective as the $40,000 ventilators but would sustain patients until the more expensive ventilators become available.

Hynes also said he has had support from two Albany County hospitals — Albany Medical Center and St. Peter’s — as well as interest from as far away as a Veterans Administration hospital in San Francisco.

Elizabeth Whalen, Albany County’s health commissioner, said she was happy to hear of PVA’s initiative. Whalen said she had used bag valve masks in emergency situations and noted they are “incredibly hard to keep going.”

Whalen described the device as feeling almost like a deflated football and, no matter how strong someone operating it is, she said, the process becomes tiring. 

McCoy said that PVA has been working with Congressman Paul Tonko’s Office, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Office, and Vice President Mike Pence’s Office and he called on the United States Food and Drug Administration to approve the portable respirator as soon as possible.

Hynes said that PVA engineers are talking with the FDA about getting emergency approval.

PVA is a global supplier of automation equipment, typically servicing the electronics, medical device, telecommunications, semiconductor, and defense industries, McCoy said.