California to send ventilators to national stockpile

California will send 500 ventilators to the federal government's national stockpile for distribution to states - such as New York - that are dealing with an overwhelming surge of COVID-19 cases in their hospitals.

The most populous U.S. state is responding to a request from the Trump Administration, through the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), to send the ventilators to the federal government rather than to individual states, so they can be distributed to places most in need, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom said Monday. He said California had increased the number of ventilators it had on hand from about 7,500 at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis to more than 11,000, with 500 more due to arrive as soon as Tuesday. The state still needed more but was in the process of procuring them.

"For all of those reasons and the responsibility, the moral and ethical responsibility of providing resources in real-time to those most in need, that's why we thought it appropriate," Newsom said at a news conference in Sacramento. "If we need them back in a few weeks, we'll get them back." Speaking at a sports arena that will be repurposed to serve as a hospital, Newsom said the ventilators would be loaned to the stockpile, "not given."

Newsom insisted the state's move had nothing to do with controversy over the weekend about the national stockpile, after Jared Kushner, son-in-law and adviser to Republican President Donald Trump, suggested it was for "our" use in an apparent reference to the federal government. Kushner said states should use their own supplies first, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services later changed its description of the stockpile to better reflect Kushner's emphasis. Newsom said that Robert Fenton, FEMA's regional administrator for the western United States, persuaded him that the California ventilators would be best put to use by the administrators of the national stockpile, who could determine which states and cities were in the greatest need.

 

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)