The ventilators promised by eccentric Tesla founder Elon Musk won’t be ready in time for the coronavirus’ apex in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday.
“The problem with ventilator construction is the supply chain,” said Cuomo in his now-daily Albany press briefing. “That’s General Motors, that’s Ford, that’s Elon Musk.
“I don’t care how big and how powerful.”
Musk has promised for weeks to shift production to the sorely-needed medical devices, to the gratitude of Mayor Bill de Blasio.
But, with the apex of the contagion possibly upon New York, Cuomo said Sunday that time had run out.
“Their time-frame, frankly, doesn’t work for our immediate apex, because whether we’re talking two days or 10 days, you’re not going to make ventilators at that time,” said Cuomo, noting that the hang-up is that some parts have to come from overseas.
Meanwhile, Cuomo continued to defend his plan to stockpile what ventilators and other resources the state have amassed in one location, deploying them as needed.
“There is no other way to do that,” he said. “I can’t say to a hospital, ‘I will send you all the supplies you need, I will send you all the ventilators you need.’ We don’t have them.”
President Trump has repeatedly and publicly criticized the decision to let resources sit in an Edison, New Jersey warehouse, but the arrangement is a matter of necessity, Cuomo stressed Sunday.
“It’s not an exercise, it’s not a drill,” he said. “It’s just a statement of reality. You’re going to have to shift and deploy resources to different locations based on the need of that location.”
