Ventilators now, not later

With state deaths from the coronavirus doubling from Tuesday to Friday, now topping 3,000, the hour of New York’s greatest need is nigh. Gov. Cuomo estimates our existing supply of ventilators will be tapped out within six days by people sick with COVID-19. Doctors at some city hospitals have been instructed to ration ventilator use, deciding who lives and dies.

This is not a drill.

Credit President Trump for scrambling, albeit belatedly, to get necessary N95 respirators to New York City. And for (again belatedly) invoking the Defense Production Act to prevent the export of vital personal protective equipment by “unscrupulous actors.”

But the looming ventilator shortfall is life and death right now.

Mr. President, Jared Kushner, focus: This is, or was, your city. We know the government has 10,469 ventilators sitting now in the Strategic National Stockpile and at the Department of Defense. Send more here now.

Fellow Americans, in states near and far: We know American hospitals have between 60,000 and 160,000 ventilators right now, some in states with few COVID-19 cases. FEMA should inventory those ventilators, now. Then, set up an interstate sharing program. When New York passes its pandemic peak, expected in a matter of weeks, the machines sent here will be swiftly returned.

If FEMA won’t act, governors and Congressional delegations should act on their own.

We applaud Cuomo’s Friday order allowing the state to seize unused ventilators from upstate hospitals and private individuals, to be shared with desperate doctors and hospitals downstate.

But we can’t do this alone.