New York state will order hospitals to give unused ventilators and protective equipment to facilities overwhelmed due to the coronavirus outbreak, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Friday.

Cuomo will issue an executive order allowing the National Guard to redistribute unused supplies to hospitals at frontlines of the pandemic, he said at a briefing. Companies and hospitals will receive reimbursement for any ventilators the state takes, he said.

“I am not going to be in a position where people are dying and we have several hundred ventilators in our own state somewhere else,” Cuomo said. “I will borrow them, I will return them, or I will pay for a new one.”

The novel coronavirus causes COVID-19, a respiratory disease that has infected over a million people and killed more than 58,000 worldwide. 

The governor’s order comes after the state experienced its highest single-day increase in deaths from COVID-19 since the outbreak began. New York state has confirmed 562 deaths from the virus since yesterday, and 2,935 people have died in total. 

The total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in New York has risen to 102,863, an increase of 5,350 from Thursday, Cuomo said. Since yesterday, 1,427 patients have been hospitalized and 1,452 have been discharged, he said.

The executive order will help ensure medical resources reach the areas that need them most, Cuomo said. Several hundred ventilators in the state are currently being left unused, he said. 

“We’re not going to have any part of the state that doesn’t have the resources it needs because we didn’t share resources,” Cuomo said. “If they want to sue me for borrowing their excess ventilators to save lives, they can sue me.”

Cuomo has urged upstate and downstate hospitals to share staff, supplies and patients as the crisis deepens in New York City and the surrounding suburbs. Several dozen patients from downstate hospitals have already transferred to upstate hospitals, state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said at the briefing.  

The state would also offer financial support to New York manufacturers who transition to producing personal protective equipment for health workers, Cuomo said. 

“It can’t be that companies in this country and this state can’t transition to make these supplies quickly,” Cuomo said. “I understand if there is a financial burden. We will address that, and we will work with you.”

New York state also passed its budget last night, Cuomo said. He highlighted several of the budget’s key features, including a ban on fentanyl, a middle class tax cut, an airport construction program and the county’s first domestic terrorism law.

Lawmakers had difficulty designing the budget given the economic uncertainty that the COVID-19 outbreak has caused, Cuomo said. The budget is instead based on a prediction of the state’s revenue and will adjust based on future economic outcomes. 

“The budget was difficult, because the state has no money,” Cuomo said. “We came up with a somewhat novel budget that actually is calibrated to future revenues or losses.”

Published on April 3, 2020 at 3:14 pm

Contact Chris: cjhippen@syr.edu