From 3 March, in response to the anticipated shortage of ventilators, the Department began to purchase as many ventilators as it could using existing NHS supply chain framework agreements, which are designed to ensure competitive pricing. It explained that as part of these initial efforts, it discussed the possibility of speeding up the manufacture of devices available through the framework, but found that this was not possible as the devices are normally built at the point of order and have complex supply chains. By 12 March the Department had managed to order an additional 2,400 mechanical ventilators. However, it recognised that this still left a ‘huge deficit’ in terms of what it thought would be needed.17