President Donald Trump won’t give every state the ventilators they’ve asked for because in some cases, “they don’t need that many,” he said on Saturday.
States that have been hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic have stressed their need for the mechanical ventilators that allow critically ill patients to keep breathing. In a press briefing on Saturday afternoon, however, Trump claimed that in some cases, states asking for ventilators don’t need as many as they say.
The Trump administration would be directly in touch with hospital administrators to get a sense for how many ventilators were actually needed, he said.
“Many hospital administrators that we’ve been in touch, even in the really hot spots — you know what they are — are communicating with directly with us that their level of supplies are meeting essential needs,” the president said. “We want distributions to be made on a fair basis.”
Last week, the president used the Defense Production Act to order General Motors to produce additional ventilators to send to states, but some of the hardest-hit states say they still don’t have enough to handle the anticipated influx of new coronavirus patients.
On Saturday Morning, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that he’d put in an order for 17,000 ventilators, but hadn’t received them.
“The states need federal assistance. No state can get all the ventilators they need,” Cuomo wrote on Twitter on Friday. “We need a national deployment of resources that follows need.”
Trump, instead of supplying the live-saving devices to the states that need them, is accusing certain states of asking for too many. “We have one state asking for 40,000 ventilators,” the president said, without naming the state. “They won’t need that many, and now they’re admitting that they don’t need that many.”
Cuomo said on Friday that New York state, which has 40% of the nation’s confirmed cases of coronavirus, would need a total of 40,000 ventilators.
“Sometimes when they know they don’t need it they want it anyway,” Trump went on. “We’re backup, remember, we’re backup. We’re the greatest backup that’s ever existed for the states.”
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Cover: President Donald Trump speaks during a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House, Saturday, April 4, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
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