Vice President Mike Pence announced that thousands of ventilators will be sent from the national stockpile to New York as the state grapples with the coronavirus pandemic.
“I was so pleased to confirm that earlier today, FEMA, from the national stockpile, shipped 2,000 ventilators to the state of New York,” Pence said Tuesday at the White House. “And tomorrow, there will be another 2,000 ventilators shipped from the national stockpile.”
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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo pleaded with the federal government for ventilators just prior to the vice president’s comments, saying the Federal Emergency Management Agency planned to send just 400 ventilators, a number he called far too small.
“Four hundred ventilators? I need 30,000 ventilators,” he said. “You want a pat on the back for sending 400 ventilators? What are we going to do with 400 ventilators when we need 30,000 ventilators?”
As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 46,000 people in the United States have tested positive for the virus and 593 have died, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. New York makes up a large share of those infected, with more than 20,000 cases.
