Governor to seize ventilators for New York City’s overtaxed hospitals
Cuomo promises to return equipment or compensate owners
coronavirus deaths surging in New York, the governor announced Friday that he will use his authority to seize ventilators and protective gear from private hospitals and companies that aren’t using them — one of the most aggressive steps yet in the U.S. to relieve severe shortages of equipment needed to fight the scourge.
The executive order he said he would sign is aimed at the kind of shortages worldwide that authorities say have caused frontline health care workers to fall sick and forced doctors in Europe to make life-or-death decisions about which patients get a breathing machine.
“If they want to sue me for borrowing their excess ventilators to save lives, let them sue me,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. He characterized it as a “sharing of resources” and promised to eventually return the equipment or compensate the owners.
Cuomo has said New York, the worst hot spot in the nation, could run out of ventilators next week, while Louisiana’s governor said New Orleans could exhaust its supply by Tuesday.
Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump said his administration is encouraging many Americans to cover their faces in public — with T-shirts, scarves or bandanas — though he stressed that the recommendation is optional and conceded that he will not follow it.
“I’m choosing not to do it,” Trump said in media briefing.
The policy change comes as public health officials are concerned that those without symptoms can spread the virus. Medical-grade masks, especially N95 respirators, are to be reserved for health workers and others on the front lines, Trump said.
The number of people infected in the U.S. exceeded a quarter-million and the death toll climbed past 6,900, with New York state alone accounting for more than 2,900 dead, an increase of over 560 in just one day. Most of the dead are in New York City, where hospitals are swamped with patients. About 15,000 people were hospitalized statewide, most of them in the city.
The Democratic governor was praised by a metropolitan-area hospital association, but some Republican elected officials outside the city objected. They called the order reckless and said it would cost lives.
“Taking our ventilators by force leaves our people without protection and our hospitals unable to save lives today or respond to a coming surge,” 12 of them said in a statement. The economic damage from the lockdowns and closures mounted.
The U.S. snapped its recordbreaking hiring streak of nearly 10 years when the government reported that employers slashed over 700,000 jobs last month. But the true picture is far worse, because the figures do not include the last two weeks, when 10 million thrownout-of-work Americans applied for unemployment benefits.
Worldwide, confirmed infections rose past one million and deaths topped 58,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Experts say both numbers are seriously undercounted because of the lack of testing, mild cases that were missed and governments that are underplaying the crisis.