N.Y. ventilator call answered

China, Oregon sending breathing machines to stricken state

NEW YORK — New York secured a planeload of ventilators from China on Saturday, and

Oregon was sending a shipment of its own to battle the coronavirus pandemic at its U.S. core, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

But the governor’s startling plan to force hospitals elsewhere in the state to give spare ventilators to the fight in New York City apparently hadn’t yet materialized, a day after he ordered them to surrender 20 percent of any unused supply to the National Guard for temporary redistribution.

The state got 1,000 ventilators after the Chinese government facilitated a donation from billionaires Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai, the co-founders of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, Cuomo said.

He added that the state of Oregon had volunteered to send 140 more breathing machines.

The influx offered some hope after the governor repeatedly warned that the state’s supply of the vital machines would be exhausted in days if the number of critically ill coronavirus patients kept growing at the current rate.

“It’s going to make a significant difference for us,” Cuomo said.

New York is the pandemic’s U.S. epicenter, with over 113,700 confirmed cases as of Saturday morning. More than 3,500 people statewide have died, and about 15,000 coronavirus patients are hospitalized. Over 4,100 are in intensive care — many, if not all, of them needing ventilators.

Cuomo’s announcement came a day after he said he would have the National Guard collect and “redeploy” ventilators that some hospitals weren’t using.

He alluded again Saturday to the plan, but details remained unclear.

“We find what equipment we have, we use it the best we can,” the Democrat

said Saturday, saying he’d seek 20 percent of “unused and available” ventilators, a number he pegged at 500 in all.

National Guard spokesman Eric Durr said Saturday that the collection had not yet begun.

President Donald Trump said Saturday that states are making inflated requests for medical supplies when the need isn’t there and suggested he had a hand in the ventilator shipment arriving from China to New York. Trump also said he would like to hear a more resounding “thank you” from Cuomo for providing medical supplies and helping quickly add hospital capacity.

“We have given the governor of New York more than anybody has ever been given in a long time,” the president told a news conference in Washington.

Trump said the federal government is setting up a 2,500-bed field hospital at New York’s Javits Center, which will be staffed by the military. He said similar hospital projects are being built in Louisiana and Dallas.

Andrew Cuomo