New York’s Gov. Cuomo calls for 30,000 ventilators

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will be sending 400 ventilators to New York. Governor Cuomo scoffed at that amount as it isn't even close to enough, according to CTV News.

“Four hundred ventilators? I need 30,000 ventilators,” Cuomo railed in a press briefing at Manhattan’s Javits Center. “You want a pat on the back for sending 400 ventilators? You’re missing the magnitude of the problem.”

Vice President Pence responded later in the day that FEMA shipped 2,000 ventilators to New York state, and another shipment of 2,000 ventilators is expected to arrive today.

Cuomo said of coronavirus that the “rate of increase has gone up” and that new infections are “doubling about every three days.”

“How can you have New Yorkers possibly dying because they can’t get a ventilator, but a federal agency saying I’m going to leave the ventilators in a stockpile? I mean, have we really come to that point?”

The US as a whole now has over 65,700 active cases of COVID-19 and has undergone 942 deaths. Experts are blaming, in part, New Orleans' annual Mardi Gras festivities, which were not squashed despite the pandemic, as part of the reason for the recent explosion of infections in that nation.