(Reuters) – New York has enough ventilators in stock to last another 6 days at the current rate they are being used in hospitals to treat coronavirus patients, and is working to convert other machines to address any shortage, the governor said on Thursday.
Given the cases mounting in his state, Andrew Cuomo said it would be too late to wait for ventilators from manufacturers just now converting production lines or ramping up to make more of the machines critical for treating the disease.
He said New York was looking to purchase ventilators from China, the main producer, and had ordered 3,000 so-called BiPAP machines, which are usually to treat chronic obstruction lung disease, for conversion into ventilators.
“The burn rate is troubling,” Cuomo told a daily briefing, referring to the rate at which hospitals are having to deploy ventilators. “I can say with confidence we have researched every possibility, every idea, every measure you can possibly take.”
Cuomo said that coronavirus cases in New York had increased to 92,381, up from 83,712 a day earlier, with deaths rising to 2,373 from 1,941, by far the most among any U.S. state.
He said he believed the apex of the crisis for New York would likely be on the “shorter end” of the projected range of 7 to 30 days from now, as the number of hospitalizations increased by about 10 percent from a day earlier to 13,383.
(reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut and Maria Caspani in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Sonya Hepinstall)
