A pair of companies based in Sandpoint teamed up last week to airlift 240 ventilators to California to help hospitals caring for patients with COVID-19.

Percussonaire Corp. manufactured the TXP 5 ventilation systems, and they were flown to Sacramento aboard two flights of aircraft produced by the Daher Group, a French company that recently purchased Quest Aircraft Co. The flights left North Idaho on Wednesday and Thursday, according to a joint news release by the two companies. The Bonner County Economic Development Corporation helped facilitate the partnership, according to the news release.

The joint venture allowed Percussionaire, a company that says its founder Forrest Bird invented the first respirator to wean patients off an iron lung device, to deliver the first of 1,000 such devices to be transported to California via Kodiak aircraft more quickly than on commercial flights.

“This would have required us to transport them by road to a major airport, undergo processing and wait until an airline flight was available, then repeat the processing and trucking on the other end,” Mark Baillie, Percussionaire president and CEO, said in a statement. “The Kodiak enabled us to transport our equipment directly from Sandpoint to Sacramento in a flight of under four hours, which was truly phenomenal.”

Breathing assistance devices are required in the most severe cases of COVID-19, caused by the novel coronavirus. Ventilators have become some of the most sought-after equipment, including such items as masks and surgical gloves, in areas of the country where patients are being admitted into intensive care units. Local hospitals have said they have enough equipment to treat Inland Northwest patients.

California has the largest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases among West Coast states, according to a tracker of confirmed cases published by the New York Times. But its outbreak is far less severe per capita than some New England states.

California’s health department reported 30,978 cases of the virus as of Tuesday afternoon, 1,300 of which have required hospitalization in an intensive care unit.