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Trump Administration Closing Gap on Ventilators

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MIT Researchers Publish Design for $100 Ventilator

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, according Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security , hospitals across the United States, and around the world, face the prospect of a shortage of life-saving ventilators in the coming days or weeks, if they are not already affected. The US government recently invoked the Defense Production Act in an effort to speed production and delivery of ventilator units by General Motors, but a number of other companies and organizations are actively pursuing alternative sources and products to mitigate the shortfall. Elon Musk announced yesterday that his company Tesla purchased 1,200 surplus ventilators from China, which will be distributed free of charge to hospitals in need. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology revived a project from several years ago to develop a makeshift ventilator using “ambu” resuscitation bags, widely available at hospitals around the world. The team intends to share its design instructions free of charge, which will allow others to construct their own unit, using US$400-500 in supplies. The units are not currently FDA-approved, but the team hopes to obtain approval in the future. Employees at 2 General Electric facilities in Massachusetts reportedly staged protests to demand that they be able to manufacture ventilators. The facilities, originally designed to produce aircraft jet engines, are currently sitting idle, and the workers want those facilities to be converted to manufacture ventilators. The protests follow an announcement by GE that it will lay off 10% of its “domestic aviation workforce” as well as “temporary” layoffs for maintenance personnel in an attempt to save the company money. Additionally, several other companies announced that they would begin producing a “simplified version of GE Healthcare’s” ventilators.

In addition to a shortage of ventilator units themselves, hospitals are also facing a shortage of the medications needed to use them. In order for a patient to be put on a ventilator, they must be sedated. According to an article published by STAT News, more than a dozen drugs are currently in short supply—including “sedatives, anesthetics, painkillers, and muscle relaxants”—due to increased demand. Like much of the healthcare supply chain, hospitals and health systems do not maintain much excess inventory of these products, so any increase in demand poses challenges. Like the traditional ventilators, however, there may be alternatives that could mitigate these shortages. For example, a small company in Texas produces “helmet-style ventilation devices” that do not require the invasive procedures required to insert a breathing tube. Reportedly, these helmets have shown promise in previous studies, and Italian clinicians have indicated that they provide benefit for COVID-19 patients. While the units do not function like actual ventilators, products like this could potentially be used for patients with respiratory symptoms who do not yet require mechanical ventilation.

9 thoughts on “Trump Administration Closing Gap on Ventilators

  1. They just cut the numbers Gap closed

    1. no time for partisan stupidity

  2. If you are getting your Covid-19 news through the lens of MSNBC or worse, CNN, then you will be beyond convinced that Trump is basically hell bent on killing everyone.

  3. CNN and Dr. Gupta have been very fact focused on informing us during this crisis.
    Unfortunately for all of us, the federal gov’t response has been too slow and unprepared.

  4. “CNN and Dr. Gupta have been very fact focused on informing us during this crisis.
    Unfortunately for all of us, the federal gov’t response has been too slow and unprepared.”

    .
    Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
    – Dean Vernon Wormer
    .

  5. if your watching CNN and MSLSD you are the problem not the coronavirus

  6. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/pandemic-coronavirus-united-states-trump-cdc/608215/

    Trump did nothing for over two months. (Hundreds of thousands traveled from China to US in January and February) He minimized the crisis and hoped that by not testing he would keep his numbers low. Ego over country.

    1. and here is a real source the CDC: On Jan. 30, the CDC confirmed publicly for the first time the person-to-person spread of Wuhan virus. That day, the president created the White House Coronavirus Task Force to coordinate efforts regarding this new disease. The next day, Jan. 31, the president declared coronavirus a U.S. public health emergency and issued the ban on travel between the United States and China. On that same day, the Senate voted on the production of additional documents in the impeachment trial of President Trump. Campaigning in Iowa that day, Biden criticized President Trump’s China travel ban, saying during an Iowa campaign event, “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia.”

      nice try , bashing the president instead of washing your hands makes you part of the problem not the solution, btw the problem with lying about this is it was all over TV and the internet and your guys(DEMOCRATS)played the race card 24/7 , in fact you were even claiming he was trying to deflect from the bogus “impeachment”

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