"I Don't Have an Option": Facing Critical Ventilator Shortage, Cuomo Orders
Seizure of Excess Equipment From Private Companies and Hospitals
"It's not that we're going to leave any health care facility without
adequate equipment, but they don't need excess equipment."
byJulia Conley, staff writer
New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo is seen during a press conference at
the field hospital site at the Javits Center in New York City. (Photo: Albin
Lohr-Jones/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo is seen during a press conference at
the field hospital site at the Javits Center in
Facing what he claims is a shortage of ventilators which will leave New York
State without the life-saving equipment in less than a week, Gov. Andrew
Cuomo said Friday he would sign an executive order allowing the state to
seize ventilators from private companies and hospitals that aren't using
them in order to treat coronavirus patients in hard-hit areas.
Cuomo said he would direct the National Guard to take ventilators and
personal protective equipment (PPE) from private companies as well as
hospitals without large numbers of coronavirus cases. The entities will
either have the equipment returned to them or will be reimbursed, the
governor said.
"I understand they don't want to give up their ventilators, ventilators are
expensive pieces of equipment," Cuomo told the press. "But I don't have an
option. And I'm not going to get into a situation where we know we are
running out of ventilators and we have people dying because there are no
ventilators."
At press time, more than 102,000 people in New York State had tested
positive for the coronavirus, officially known as COVID-19. More than 2,900
people have died of the virus in the state, including at least 1,562 in New
York City.
Cuomo estimated that after the order is carried out, "several hundred"
excess ventilators could be made available to the hospitals which need them.
Earlier on Friday, the governor warned that he expected the state to run out
of available ventilators within six days.
"It's not that we're going to leave any health care facility without
adequate equipment, but they don't need excess equipment," Cuomo said.
President Donald Trump has been excorciated by critics in recent weeks for
calling on state governments to "try getting" ventilators and other supplies
themselves, calling hospitals that are pleading for more equipment
insatiable "complainers," and seizing states' orders while they were en
route from the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS). The president has yet to
invoke the Defense Production Act on a wide scale to order the production of
new ventilators, despite comments suggesting he would.
On Thursday, Trump's senior advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, suggested
that states are misusing the SNS by requesting equipment from it, saying the
stockpile is not meant to provide states with supplies even though it is
taxpayer-funded.
Journalist Daniel Dale on Friday pointed out that the SNS website was
changed after Kushner's statement.
A description of the program which previously said the stockpile is
available "when state, local, tribal, are territorial responders request
assistance to support their response efforts" now reads, "Many states have
products stockpiled, as well"-reflecting Kushner's earlier statement.
In New York on Friday, Republican lawmakers in the state criticized Cuomo's
executive order as an overreach. One reporter at the governor's press
conference asked Cuomo if he was concerned that private companies would take
legal action against him over the move.
"If they want to sue me for borrowing their excess ventilators to save
lives, let them sue me," Cuomo said.
