(PatrioticPost.Com)- New York Governor Andrew Cuomo made the shocking announcement on Tuesday that the state is being forced to use one ventilator machine for two patients. The move comes as the state struggled to acquire the medical equipment required to deal with the growing number of coronavirus patients.
“We’re going so far as to try an experimental procedure where we split the ventilator,” Cuomo explained. “We use one ventilator for two patients. It’s experimental, but at this point, we have no alternative.”
The comments came during the daily press briefings given by the governor. Cuomo is overseeing the largest number of cases every day out of any state in the country.
Cuomo explained how the experiment works, detailing how medical professionals are placing a single ventilator between two patients’ beds with two sets of tubes being attached to every patient.
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” he said. “We are working on this as we speak because life is options and we don’t have any other options.”
The drastic measures must be taken as the Obama administration failed to learn from the swine flu epidemic in 2009 and the Ebola outbreak in 2014 and didn’t stockpile medical equipment that is necessary during pandemics like these.
Cuomo says New York is experimenting with having two patients share one ventilator: “At this point, we have no alternative” https://t.co/hmODbKuv4b pic.twitter.com/8hUOyzJEFH
— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 24, 2020
Other drastic measures are being taken across the state, particularly in New York City where the outbreak is spreading particularly quickly. The Javits Convention Center in Manhattan is in the process of being transformed into a hospital with around 2,000 beds to treat people suffering from the coronavirus. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is also embarking on a wider project to construct four hospitals with 250 extra beds each. 1,000 more beds will be provided by a fifth facility being developed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
As of Tuesday, New York has almost 21,000 confirmed coronavirus cases. 157 people have died in the state as a result of the disease, and it is expected that a total of 110,000 hospital beds will be required to treat everyone affected.
