The model is "quite simple", a basic ventilator designed and made in Spain, but it is helping ease pressure on the nation's hospitals that have been overwhelmed by patients struggling to breathe.

Known as the OyxGEN, the new ventilator — powered by a windscreen wiper motor — is currently being produced at a repurposed assembly line of Spanish carmaker SEAT, which is running off around 100 units per day at its Martorell facility in Catalonia.

The device became a reality at a speed "which we could never have even imagined," said Dr Manel Puig Domingo, who heads the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute and has overseen the entire project.

Read the full AFP story here.