New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he was comfortable with the number of ventilators in his state during a Monday press conference on the coronavirus pandemic.
“We don’t need any additional ventilators right now,” Cuomo said to reporters.
The New York governor spent recent weeks spreading the alarm about ventilator shortages, prompting fears that the federal and the state stockpile of ventilators would not be enough. But Cuomo now says the state government had moved and acquired thousands of ventilators in recent weeks, ending his concerns of a shortage.
“There is no hospital that needs ventilators that doesn’t have ventilators, there is no hospital that needs PPE (personal protective equipment) that doesn’t have it in the state system,” Cuomo said.
On Friday, Cuomo ordered the National Guard to acquire and move ventilators from hospitals around the state. On Saturday, Cuomo reported that China had donated 1,000 machines to New York, thanks to foundations set up by Alibaba founders Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai.
Cuomo also thanked states like Washington, Oregon, and California for releasing their own ventilators to help New York.
“That is the right attitude,” Cuomo said. “That’s the only way we do this as a nation, we’re going to have to be flexible.”
The New York governor asserted that even though the hospitals were at “red line” capacity, he felt that the state was successful in managing resources.
“Are we managing this situation that best that can be managed, yes, have we lost anyone who we could have saved, I don’t believe so,” he said. “With that, we can sleep at night.”