California Gov. Gavin Newsom Says Federal Government Sent ‘170 Broken Ventilators’ – By Sanya Mansoor (TIME) / March 29 2020
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Saturday that the federal government had sent the state “170 broken ventilators” amid national concerns about a shortage of the life-saving machines, which can be key to treating the respiratory distress caused by COVID-19.
Newsom said at a press conference that “170 ventilators that came from the national stockpile directly” to Los Angeles county were “not working.” But, he added, “rather than pointing fingers,” authorities in California transported the ventilators to a facility to get them fixed by San Jose-based Bloom Energy.
LA received 170 broken ventilators from the national stockpile. Rather than complaining, we put them on a truck, drove them up overnight, and had @Bloom_Energy get to work fixing them.
Monday they‘ll back in LA–fixed.
That’s the spirit of CA. pic.twitter.com/y8yzsiC3Ny
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) March 28, 2020
Newsom said the broken ventilators arrived at the facility on Saturday morning and he expects the ventilators will be functioning and back in Los Angeles on Monday. “That’s the spirit of California,” Newsom said.
On Saturday, Newsom toured the Bloom Energy ventilator refurbishing site in Sunnyvale, according to a Saturday press release from the governor’s office. Bloom Energy has partnered with the state to transform its production facility to “quickly refurbish life-saving ventilators to provide California with the critical equipment it needs to prepare for a potential surge in COVID-19 patients.”
At the beginning of the pandemic, California had about 7,500 ventilators across the state’s hospital systems and aimed to get another 10,000 ventilators, according to the press release. “To date, the state has added 4,252 ventilators, approximately 1,000 of which needed to be refurbished,” it said.
Continue to article: https://time.com/5812147/california-coronavirus-broken-ventilators/
