The White House economist says the ventilator will be ready for the second
wave of the Corona virus in the fall.
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The country has double the number of ventilators
needed for the immediate coronavirus burden, according to one of President Trump’s
top economic advisers, who said a massive increase in production would ensure
the country was ready for a second wave of infections in the fall.
Availability of ventilators was a major concern for governors
battling the COVID-19 pandemic as severe respiratory problems strained hospital
intensive care units.
However, in recent weeks, senior officials have touted their success
in working with private companies to ramp up production even as questions
remain about other areas of the pandemic response.
Acting Chairman of the Council of Economic
Advisers Tomas Philipson told the Washington Examiner a new federal share program would ensure that
even worst-case scenarios for the next month would not overwhelm national
supply.
His forecasts show that worst-case-scenario peak
demand in that period requires about 50,000 ventilators, with about 95,000
forecasted to be in hospitals and a further 10,000 in the strategic national
stockpile.
“If that’s true, you have twice as many
ventilators in the country than are needed. Then you should be able to
reallocate from the regions that have too many to the regions that have too little,”
he said.
The slack is being taken up by the “dynamic ventilator reserve”
program launched last week, he said, with 20 hospital systems joining.
The secret is a federal guarantee so that hospitals sending out a
machine to a hot spot know they can get one back if it suddenly faces an influx
of patients suffering breathing difficulties.
“In financial credit markets, we guarantee loans all the time with
the government,” he said. “Here it’s sort of in a barter trade of highly needed
medical supply.”
Last month, Trump promised to deliver more than 100,000
ventilators in 100 days. And this week, Vice President Mike Pence visited
a GE Healthcare plant in Wisconsin to highlight how the private
sector had pivoted to the effort.
But lag between desperate pleas for more ventilators by
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a production ramp-up led critics to say the
response was too late.
And there are questions about whether
ventilators are saving lives. A new study of New York’s largest health system
found that only 12% of COVID-19 patients placed on mechanical ventilators
survived.
Philipson, an expert in healthcare economics, said there were many
good reasons to build ventilator stockpiles.
“One is a second wave in the fall, which we don’t know
if it will be big or small relative to this,” he said.
“The second aspect is even if you overproduce and have too many
ventilators, it will be useful for the stockpile ... not necessarily for Covid
but for other diseases.
“This problem of medical supplies for Covid, I think, highlighted
how under capacity we were from legacy systems under previous administrations.”
The fall could present a tough challenge for health workers.
Flare-ups of coronavirus cases could coincide with a seasonal surge in
influenza.
Last year, the Council of Economic Advisers
warned that a future flu pandemic could claim the lives of about half a million
people in the United States at a cost of as much as $3.79 trillion.
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