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 The administration's ventilator surge is accelerating as medical
experts are forecasting the need for the devices - used to help
severely ill COVID-19 patients breathe - will fall. Many of the
ventilators will now be sent to other countries in need, the
administration says.
Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday plans to visit a General
Electric Co <GE.N> facility in Madison, Wisconsin, where they
assemble ventilators, the company and his office confirmed.
On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump taunted critics of his
administration's coronavirus response, tweeting: "Last month all you
heard from the Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats was, “Ventilators,
Ventilators, Ventilators.” They screamed it loud & clear, & thought
they had us cold, even though it was the State's task. But everyone
got their V’s, with many to spare."
Ventilators became a symbol in March of the lack of preparedness in
the U.S. medical system for the surge in patients suffering from
COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus that attacks the lungs.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose state has been the epicenter
of the U.S. outbreak with more than 240,000 cases, had said his
state alone could need as many as 30,000 ventilators.
On March 27, Trump invoked the Korean War era Defense Production Act
to compel General Motors Co <GM.N> to build ventilators.
"We have so many now that at some point soon we're going to be
helping Mexico and Italy and other countries," Trump said on Monday.
"We'll be sending them ventilators, which they desperately need."
Now, governors and business leaders have shifted their focus away
from ventilators to the lack of widespread coronavirus testing that
medical experts say is necessary to safely end stay-at-home orders
and allow people to go back to work.
With the number of New York patients needing intensive care
declining, Cuomo said last week he will send some of the ventilators
his state received and no longer needs to Maryland and Michigan.
The government's ventilator buying spree comes as the Institute for
Health Metrics and Evaluation (IMHE) currently forecasts total needs
for invasive ventilators at 16,631 units, a fraction of the total
the United States plans to buy.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has not
broken out how many of the 187,000 ventilators are invasive
versions.
Whether U.S. hospitals will need all the ventilators companies such
as GM, Ford Motor Co <F.N>, General Electric and Philips <PHG.AS>
are now contracted to build will depend on whether the pandemic
eases, or gets worse, experts said.
DEMAND COULD STILL RISE
Dr. Christopher Murray, the director of IMHE at the University of
Washington, told Reuters demand for ventilators could rise sharply
"if there is a second wave of infection or an immediate rebound when
we take off social distancing."
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Some states have said they will begin reopening parts of their economies earlier
than health experts are recommending.
If the United States maintains social distancing then the planned production of
nearly 190,000 ventilators would be "way beyond what we will need," Murray said.
Either way, ventilator companies are ramping up production to levels way beyond
pre-pandemic demand.
Records made public of some HHS ventilator contracts show they were
single-source contracts with no competitive bids, which the agency said was due
to the urgent need.
Zoll, a unit of Asahi Kasei Group <3407.T> and one of the companies that
received an HHS contract, is boosting production by 25 times to 10,000 per
month.
Resmed Inc <RMD.N> received a $32 million HHS contract to produce 2,550
ventilators by July 13.
"FEMA was very specific that they only want invasive ventilators," Resmed Chief
Executive Mick Farrell told Reuters, referring to the Federal Emergency
Management Agency that is directing the ventilator program.
"FEMA is building up these ventilators as a backstop," added Farrell, who called
the agency's production target reasonable.
"If you look at Germany, they had 50,000 ventilators for a population of about
80 million," Farrell said, noting that would mean the United States could need
200,000 given its much larger population. "I think FEMA was looking at models
from Germany and France and then maybe added a buffer on top of that to play it
safe."
Trump on Saturday said the United States will send ventilators to Mexico after a
discussion with his Mexican counterpart. "I told him we're going to be helping
him very substantially," Trump said.
Hill-Rom <HRC.N>, which also got an HHS contract and makes non-invasive
ventilators, has increased its production by five times its pre-pandemic levels
and predicted it could be months before the health crisis is over.
"The idea is not only to make sure we in the U.S. but also around the world have
them God forbid something like this should ever happen again," Hill-Rom
spokesman Howard Karesh said.
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Carl O'Donnell in New York;
Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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