Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has reportedly donated more than 1,000 ventilators to local health officials in Los Angeles after initially questioning the severity of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Just had a long engineering discussion with Medtronic about state-of-the-art ventilators,” Musk tweeted Saturday. “Very impressive team!”
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom responded to the news: “Elon Musk, how about this? I told you a few days ago that he was likely to have a thousand ventilators this week. They arrived in Los Angeles and [Musk] is already working with the hospital association and others to get those ventilators out in real time. It’s a heroic effort.”
California, where Newsom has issued a statewide shelter-in-place order, is one of the hardest-hit U.S. states by the pandemic. Tesla’s headquarters are in Palo Alto.
Musk has expressed skepticism about the dangers of the pandemic, which is nearing a half-million confirmed cases and 20,000 deaths worldwide.
“The coronavirus panic is dumb,” Musk tweeted on March 6.
[Click here for complete coronavirus coverage]
The coronavirus panic is dumb
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 6, 2020
Musk, one of the richest people in the world, has seen his net worth affected by the virus’s outbreak.
The Tesla founder was worth $45 billion in February, a figure that has dropped to $27 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
