NY governor vows to seize ventilators
THE governor of New York has vowed to take ventilators and protective equipment from private hospitals and companies that are not using them as the state’s coronavirus death toll rose to almost 3,000.
Andrew Cuomo complained that states are competing against each other for vital equipment in eBaylike bidding wars.
“If they want to sue me for borrowing their excess ventilators to save lives, let them sue me,” Mr Cuomo said.
The executive order he said he would sign represents one of the most aggressive efforts yet in the US to deal with the kind of shortages around the world that have caused healthcare workers to fall sick and forced doctors in Europe to make life-or-death decisions about which patients get a ventilator.
The number of people infected in the US has reached 250,000 and the death toll climbed past 6,000, with New York state alone accounting for more than 2,900, a surge of over 560 dead in just one day. Most of the dead are in New York City, where hospitals are being pushed to breaking point.
The move by Mr Cuomo came as the Covid-19 outbreak snapped the United States’ record-breaking hiring streak of nearly 10 years. The US government said employers slashed over 700,000 jobs in March, bringing a swift end to the nation’s lowest unemployment rate in 50 years. The true picture, though, is far worse, because the government figures do not include the last two weeks, when nearly 10 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits.
Worldwide, confirmed infections surged past one million and deaths topped 54,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Experts say both numbers are seriously under-counted because of the lack of testing, mild cases that were missed and governments that are underplaying the extent of the crisis.
But some glimmers of hope emerged that Italy, with nearly 14,000 dead, as well as Spain and France, might be flattening their infection curves and nearing or even passing their peaks in daily deaths.
Spain yesterday reported 932 new deaths, down slightly from the record it hit a day earlier.
The toll most certainly included large numbers of elderly who authorities admit are not getting access to the country’s limited breathing machines, which are being used first on healthier, younger patients.
More than half of Spain’s nearly 11,000 deaths have come in the last seven days alone.
Elsewhere in Europe, officials began talking tentatively about how to lift lockdowns that have staved off the collapse of strained health systems but also battered economies.