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Ventilator donations have poured into New York at the 11th hour, as state officials expect hospitalizations from the coronavirus to peak and plateau in the coming days.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom Monday said the state would lend 500 ventilators to the Strategic National Stockpile to help relieve the pressure on hospitals inundated with patients sick with COVID-19 in New York and other U.S. hot spots.
Newsom’s announcement was the latest in a groundswell from state governors, public figures and private companies to get vital equipment to New York, which is barreling toward the worst of its outbreak. More than 130,000 people had tested positive for the virus across New York state by Monday, more than two-thirds of whom were in New York City’s five boroughs. Statewide, 4,758 people have died, and about half of the fatalities have been in New York City.
“California is stepping up to help our fellow Americans in New York and across the country,” Newsom said on Monday. “We can’t turn our back on Americans whose lives depend on having a ventilator now.”
The news follows similar altruism from Oregon, which committed to sending 140 ventilators over the weekend. Washington state, which had the earliest major outbreak in the U.S., said it would send back 400 vents it received from the federal stockpile so they could be redirected to New York and other hot spots.
“That is the right attitude,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday at a news briefing. “The only way we do this is as a nation.”
He also announced over the weekend that China would donate 1,000 ventilators and other personal protective equipment, a gift facilitated by Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai, co-founders of Alibaba, and Ambassador Huang Ping, the consul general of China’s consulate in New York.
Tsai is also the owner of the Brooklyn Nets, which, in partnership with the NBA and New York Knicks, will donate 1 million surgical masks, Cuomo also said over the weekend.
Not every pledge has turned out exactly as expected. Tesla boss Elon Musk’s promise to deliver hundreds of ventilators turned out to be a less powerful, noninvasive type of machine, called BiPAPs. Musk defended sending those machines instead last week, saying on Twitter that the hospitals he spoke with confirmed those machines were critically needed. He also tweeted that powerful, intratracheal units were also on the way.
The wave of assistance comes as the state potentially approaches a plateau faster than anticipated. Cuomo and his advisers, drawing on models from a raft of epidemiologists and statisticians, had expected the crisis to peak with as many as 110,000 hospitalizations anywhere from mid-April to early May. But strict social distancing measures, including the closure of schools and all nonessential businesses, has, for now, flattened the curve and put the disease on a less intense course.
“This could suggest that we are indeed, potentially, at the apex or beginning to be at the apex at this moment,” said Dr. Jim Malatras, president of SUNY Empire State College and an adviser on Cuomo’s virus response team, at the Monday briefing.
For instance, the number of admissions to intensive care units dropped significantly for the second-straight day on Sunday.
“It is hopeful, but it’s inconclusive and it still depends on what we do,” Cuomo said, as he reiterated the dire need for people to stay at home.
But New York hospitals, particularly in New York City, were at capacity already and the governor said he was prepared for the likelihood that the outbreak could plateau at this level for some time, further stretching staff and equipment.
“The engine is at redline and you can’t go any faster,” Cuomo said. “People can’t work any harder, the staff cant work any harder and staying at this level is problematic.”
Cuomo said he planned to ask President Donald Trump if he could convert the 1,000-bed USNS Comfort, which was meant for non-COVID-19 patients, to a COVID-only facility. The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, which the federal government converted into a 2,500-bed emergency medical facility, is now only for coronavirus patients.
A little more than 800 more ventilators from the state stockpile were released to hospitals on Monday, and, for now, every hospital had the equipment it needed to support its patients, Cuomo said, though he did not know the precise number of machines left in the stockpile.
“They are all running low,” he said, but “nobody doesn’t have what they need to do their job.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. government also sent another 600,000 N95 respirator masks from the national stockpile specifically to New York City’s independent hospitals, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a separate briefing on Monday.
“That’s on top of the 200,000 (that) arrived for our public hospitals on Friday,” he said. “So now we can say that our supply of N95s for the week is sufficiently secure.”
The city’s focus is now hospital gowns, which two apparel companies at the Brooklyn Navy Yard will help produce, and making sure hospitals have sufficient ventilators, he said.
