STARK WARNING

Trump’s Promised 100K Ventilators Won’t Be Ready Until June: FEMA

FEMA officials warned lawmakers that the nation’s emergency stockpile, which has only 9,500 ventilators, is alarmingly low.

President Trump has claimed that “we’re going to have plenty” of life-saving ventilators with an additional 100,000 provided to hospitals, but Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) officials told lawmakers this week that they likely won’t be ready until June “at the earliest,” Politico reported on Thursday. The FEMA officials warned the House Oversight Committee that there were only 9,500 ventilators in the emergency federal stockpile of personal protective equipment. They said that 3,200 additional ventilators will be rolled out by the week of April 13, which is when the coronavirus outbreak in the United States is expected to peak.

Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C. only received 10 percent of their requested 5.2 million respirator masks and less than one percent of their requested 194 million pairs of gloves. “The president must act immediately to take all steps within his authority to get personal protective equipment and medical supplies to our nation’s front-line responders who are risking everything to save their fellow Americans,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee.