Ventilator need disputed
President questions root of states’ complaints
President Donald Trump said Saturday some states have received ventilators from the federal government but were insisting they needed more.
WASHINGTON — Governors’ warnings of life-threatening shortages of ventilators have emerged as a flashpoint between President Donald Trump and the states as the coronavirus crisis deepens.
“Some states have more ventilators than they need,” Trump said at a news briefing Saturday. “They don’t even like to admit it. They’ll admit it when everything’s over, but that doesn’t help us very much.”
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has said his state is expected to exhaust its supply Monday. Though Louisiana has received some ventilators from the national stockpile, Edwards said his state still needs thousands more.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has estimated his state will need 30,000 ventilators and could start facing shortages by the middle of next week.
Cuomo dismissed the suggestion that he was overstating the needs. He said New York was prepared to pay for 17,000 ventilators it had ordered but didn’t get due to competing orders.
On Saturday, Cuomo said New York secured a planeload of 1,000 ventilators from China, and Oregon was sending a shipment of 140 of its own to battle the coronavirus pandemic at its U.S. core.
“It’s going to make a significant difference for us,” Cuomo said.
Without naming a specific governor, Trump said Saturday that he was frusMost trated that some states that have already received ventilators from the federal government were insisting they needed more.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer have also expressed frustration over competing against one another – and the federal government – in bidding for supplies in the private market, which has led to price-gouging.
Trump has declared the U.S. would produce 100,000 ventilators in 100 days and told reporters Thursday that 11 companies were behind the effort to expedite production.
While General Motors and Ford have said they would manufacture ventilators, it wasn’t immediately clear what other companies were producing the machines.
of the 100,000 ventilators Trump promised to have by June would not be available until the end of the month at the earliest, FEMA officials told the House Oversight Committee this week.
FEMA said there were just 9,500 ventilators in the national stockpile, with about 3,200 expected to be added by the week of April 13, according to documents from the agency released by the committee’s Democrats.
Trump has said the federal government’s stockpile can help the country through the crisis but has also criticized states for having “insatiable appetites” for equipment and not doing enough to build their own supplies.
“States should have been building their stockpiles,” he said. “We’re a backup, we’re not an ordering clerk.”