The family of renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking said on Wednesday it had donated his ventilator to help treat hospital patients with novel coronavirus.
Hawking’s daughter, Lucy, said the ventilator he used has been given to the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, eastern England, where he received medical care during his life.
"As a ventilated patient, Royal Papworth was incredibly important to my father and helped him through some very difficult times," she said, according to the AFP news agency.
"We realized that it would be at the forefront of the COVID-19 epidemic and got in touch with some of our old friends there to ask if we could help."
Hawking passed away in 2018 at the age of 76 after a glittering career dedicated to unlocking the secrets of the universe, despite a life-long battle with a severe form of motor neurone disease.
Hawking, who spent most of his life in a wheelchair and talked using a computer speech synthesizer, had some equipment from Britain´s state-run National Health Service.
His daughter said on Wednesday that device was returned after his death but the ventilator was bought personally by the Cambridge University academic and author of "A Brief History of Time".
The Royal Papworth Hospital has doubled its critical care capacity as a result of the outbreak, which has seen more than 17,300 deaths across Britain.
Hawking’s ventilator has now been added to additional machines brought in to help the most seriously ill patients after being checked by the hospital’s engineering department, noted AFP.
Papworth's clinical director for respiratory medicine, Mike Davies, said they were grateful to the family for the donation.
"We are now extremely busy caring for patients who are critically ill with COVID-19 and the support we are receiving from patients, their families and the local community means a great deal," he added.
On Tuesday, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that an experimental vaccine for coronavirus disease will be passed to human trials as early as Thursday after clinical trials have shown "promising results".
The vaccine, a development of the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, will be coming into serial production in coming days, with the goal of reaching a large number of vaccines by September, in hopes that the trials will see positive results and the vaccine can be used.