The state of California received 170 defunct ventilators from President Donald Trump amid the worsening case of coronavirus outbreak. But instead of lamenting, Governor Gavin Newsom did quickly bring the machines to a shop that would fix it so that Covid-19 patients had something to use.
Ventilators are used to help coronavirus patients breathe as the virus triggers the lungs, giving them a hard time breathing. So when Newsom learned that the machines that the federal government sent to the Los Angeles County through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), he remained calm and did something about it.
Newsom didn't hold a press conference or blame Donald Trump for the non-working ventilators. Instead, he had the ventilators delivered to the Bloom Energy to have it fixed. "Rather than lamenting about it, rather than complaining about it, rather than pointing fingers, rather than generating headlines in order to generate more stress and anxiety, we got a car and a truck," he said in a clip, shared on his Twitter page.
After bringing the ventilators to Bloom Energy at 8 in the morning, the facility quickly started working on the machines. It was then returned to the county last Monday. Newsom revealed that California already had 7,500 ventilators throughout its hospitals even before the coronavirus outbreak began.
Now, he was able to add in over 4,200 machines. Amid the scare and pandemic, Newsom proudly said that the spirit of California and this moment was to take responsibility, ownership, and take it upon themselves to "meet this moment head-on."
In a press release from Newsom's office, the governor was said to have toured the Bloom Energy ventilator refurbishing site in Sunnyvale. The company collaborated with California to turn 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."
According to Time, there are no substitutes for ventilators that the coronavirus patients can use. It is the only thing that can help the victims breathe when the virus aggressively attacks the lungs. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, believed that the U.S. only has a "fraction" of ventilators needed to respond to the coronavirus outbreak.
With the increasing number of positive cases in California and other states, there are fears that there will be a shortage of medical supplies, like ventilators and other equipment needed to fight the coronavirus outbreak. Hence, California is eyeing to manufacture 10,000 additional ventilators to save more lives.
