NY GETS VENTILATORS FROM CHINA

NEW YORK: New York, the epicentre of the Coronavirus pandemic in the US, has received ventilators from China and the state of Oregon too pledged to send the life saving equipment as authorities here grappled with insufficient medical supplies to treat over 100,000 Coronavirus cases in the state.

Governor Andrew Cuomo on Saturday said New York had ordered 17,000 ventilators from the federal government, which had a stockpile of about 10,000 ventilators for the nation.

He said demand for the life-saving medical equipment surges across the US, which now has more than 312,100 COVID-19 cases.

China has sent 1,000 ventilators to the US, while Oregon will dispatch 140 ventilators to New York.

China is remarkably the repository for all of these orders. Ventilators, PPE, it all goes back to China. Long term, we have to figure out why we wound up in this situation where we don't have the manufacturing capacity in this country.

"I understand supply chain issues, I understand the cost of manufacturing, but there's a public health reason, as we've all learned the hard way, why we need the capacity in this country to do this, Cuomo said.

In order to meet this demand for ventilators, New York has been shopping in China, he said.

The Governor said he asked the White House to help the state navigate China and he spoke to the Chinese ambassador and we got really good news today. The Chinese government is going to facilitate a donation of 1,000 ventilators that came in to John F Kennedy Airport.