White House: US planning to ship 8,000 ventilators abroad

WASHINGTON— President Donald Trump, who' s taken to calling the U.S. the “king” of ventilators, is making plans to ship 8,000 of the breathing machines to foreign countries by the end of July to help in their fight against the coronavirus.

That's along way from the early days of the virus when U.S. medical workers were wondering if a shortage of ventilators would force them to make painful decisions about which patients would get them.

Now, the U.S. has a surplus and the president is sharing them with other countries—a goodwill gesture that also helps him offset criticism about his own early response to the pandemic.

The White House did not respond to a request for specifics about how many ventilators have been sent so far, or the criteria for determining which countries will get them. But an ad min istr at ion official familiar with the effort provided the 8,000 figure as part of alis to factions aimed at supporting health systems abroad.

The official was not authorized to discuss the projection publicly and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

“We have nine factories that are throwing out ventilators at numbers t hat nobody can believe. There's not been anything like that since the Second World War,” Trump said Friday.

Trump said the U.S. was giving t he breathing machines to some countries. It was unclear if some nations would pay for the ventilators, which cost $5,000 to $30,000, depending on the model.

“In a certain way, I' d like them tobe do nati ons. I really do. I think it' s goodwill ,” Trump said earlier in the week. “It's hard to say you have to pay us in order to save people from dying.”

The machines shipped to other countries do not come from the national stock pile, which has about 12,000 ready to be deployed to U.S. jurisdictions. The U.S. stockpile, which is maintained by the Department of Health and Human Services, is being replenished with thousands of ventilators manufactured under t he Defense Production Act.

“Initially, it was very scary and we had a lot of states requesting numbers that could not be supplied,” Jared Kushner, an adviser to the president and Trump' s son-inlaw, said Friday during a White House meeting with Republican members of Congress.

“The president wanted to make sure that anybody in this country who needed a ventilator would get a ventilator. He saw what was happening in Italy, where people were dying in hospitals and not able to get the care they needed, and the president said ` I don't want that to happen in America .'”

Ku sh ne rs aid the administration used the Defense Production Act to approve about 10 contracts with companies to make ventilators. Last year, the United States made about 30,000 ventilators, Ku sh ne rs aid. This year, in just a fourmonth period, the U.S. will make about 150,000, he said.

“We' reina place right now where we' re doing well ,” Ku sh ne rs aid .“A lot of our allies—the countries that are friendly with America—are starting to get ventilators from us, and we have more than enough to take care of all the American citizens so it' s been a great success story.”

In recent weeks, Trump has been recounting other countries' calls for help. He said he' d offered Russia' s Vladimir Put in ventilators during a call on Thursday.

“Countries know that we have tremendous amounts, tremendous volume and they' ve been calling. Nigeria just called. We' re giving them 250 ventilators. We have many countries, I' d say 12,14 countries t hat call ed,” Trump said this week .“We' re sending quite a few to France. We' re sending quite a few to Spain and, Italy. We have four African countries.”