Federal agencies warned of ventilator shortages for nearly two decades​

The overwhelming number of coronavirus patients flooding hospitals across the U.S. has resulted in a shortage of ventilators for those experiencing difficulty breathing.

But while President Trump has faced criticism from states, like New York, for the short supply, federal agencies have been predicting the need for more ventilators for nearly two decades. Reports from various government offices have been sounding the alarm over the course of at least three successive presidencies dating back to the George W. Bush administration.

“GAO found that most hospitals lack the capacity to respond to large-scale infectious disease outbreaks,” concluded the U.S. Government Accountability Office in a 2003 report after the SARS outbreak, noting that “few hospitals have adequate medical equipment, such as the ventilators that are often needed for respiratory infections such as SARS, to handle the large increases in the number of patients that may result.”

A 2005 Congressional Research Service report examining avian flu also noted that the U.S. was unlikely to be prepared for a pandemic due to that virus’ effect on the lungs.

“If this strain were to launch a pandemic and retain this trait, large numbers of victims may require intensive care and ventilatory support, likely exceeding national capacity to provide this level of care,” that report said. “In any event, such specialized care is not available in most developing countries, and access to it is uneven within the United States.”

Later that same year, the Department of Health and Human Services released an extensive report on the plan for an influenza pandemic. A key item on their list of actions to take for a “health care and emergency response” was to “assess surge capacity” of medical systems including ventilators, noting the necessity for maintaining an emergency stockpile.

“Despite planning and preparedness, however, in a severe pandemic it is possible that shortages, for example of mechanical ventilators, will occur and medical care standards may need to be adjusted to most effectively provide care and save as many lives as possible,” the report warned, noting the likelihood of a significant increase in the demand for ventilators in the event of a large-scale outbreak.

The need for ventilators – and other resources – is repeatedly discussed in this report, even referencing a CDC spreadsheet that could help predict the potential need for ventilators at different stages of a pandemic.

A CNN report last week detailed a number of these internal government reports.

The mounting problem after nearly two decades of warnings, however, is not simply the product of a problem ignored. The government accepted bids from companies in 2008 planning to buy tens of thousands of additional ventilators for the stockpile after swine flu, avian flu, SARS, and MERS revealed the need. According to a New York Times report, the federal government contracted the small Japanese company Newport Medical Instruments to develop and produce inexpensive ventilators that the U.S. would purchase.

Years later, after prototypes were developed, Newport was bought out by Covidien in 2012, and the project ground to a halt. By 2014, Covidien wanted out of the contract, former federal officials told the Times, and the government agreed to cancel it. A year later, Covidien was purchased by Medtronic, which told the Times that the ventilators Newport was developing would not have been usable on newborns and would have fallen short of the government’s requirements.

The government entered into a new contract with Philips in 2014, and finally ordered 10,000 ventilators in December 2019, with delivery expected later this year.

“We definitely saw the problem,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, CDC director from 2009 to 2017, told the Times. “We innovated to try and get a solution. We made really good progress, but it doesn’t appear to have resulted in the volume that we needed.”

Meanwhile, reports sounding the alarm continued to pile up while that effort stalled.

In 2006, the Congressional Budget Office warned that in the event of a flu pandemic on the level of the 1918 Spanish flu, the U.S. would be grossly underprepared when it comes to ventilators. The CBO noted that at the time there were an estimated 100,000 ventilators in the country, but “a severe influenza pandemic like the one in 1918 would require 750,000 ventilators to treat victims.”

A 2007 flu pandemic plan published by the Department of the Interior also noted that in such an event: “A substantial percentage of the world's population will require some form of medical care,” and that medical facilities would likely be “ overwhelmed, creating a shortage of hospital staff, beds, ventilators and other supplies.”

Similar language was used in a 2009 OSHA report for influenza pandemic preparedness that also referred to instructions from the Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC for estimating the demand for ventilators and other equipment in the event of pandemics of varying scales.

The same year, a report on preparedness for swine flu from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology warned then-President Barack Obama that “[c]ases requiring mechanical ventilation or intensive care could reach 10 to 25 per 100,000 population, requiring 50 to 100 percent or more of the total ICU capacity available in the United States and placing great stress on a system that normally operates at 80 percent of capacity.”

In 2013, an avian flu outbreak in China led to a report from the National Institutes of Health on the demand for ventilators in the event of a flu pandemic.

“There is a clear challenge to plan and prepare to meet demands for mechanical ventilators for a future severe pandemic,” the report said, estimating that in a “high severity scenario,” the U.S. would need “approximately 35,000 to 60,500 additional ventilators.”

The Trump administration was also warned, as a June 2017 CDC report discussed the agency-managed Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) of ventilators, stating that “SNS ventilators might not suffice to meet demand during a severe public health emergency.”

In 2006, the American Association for Respiratory Care recommended that the SNS increase its ventilator inventory to between 11,000 and 16,000. Earlier this month, Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN that the stockpile currently has 12,700 ventilators. This is up from roughly 4,000 in 2006.

Now that the country is in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the government is pushing for speedier delivery of the ordered ventilators that had been expected later on this year, as well as looking to other manufacturers for additional machines.

General Motors has been working with medical device company Ventec Life Systems and parts suppliers to build more ventilators, and Trump invoked the Defense Production Act when he felt they were not moving fast enough.

GM expects to produce ventilators at a rate of 10,000 per month starting in mid-April.

Ford has announced that they and General Electric are also working together to produce “a simplified version” of an existing GE ventilator.

 

That's right. And let it be known that he sent L.A. Country 170 ventilators. How was he to know they were broken and didn't work.
You gotta love it, huh?

 

BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMABUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMABUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMABUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMABUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMABUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMABUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMABUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMABUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMABUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMABUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMABUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMABUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMABUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA BUT OBAMA

 

I guess socialist Italy and Spain are the better models as to how to deal with a pandemic.

Or maybe allow the damned virus time to wreak its havoc instead of dragging it out.

 

The virus will either make you sick or it will not. The economic destruction is a certainty that we truly have control over.

 

Yeah well those ventilators in question were manufacture in 2011 under Oduma's watch. It seems they past quality standards, were tested and given the OK for use by the Oduma administration....

So what do you expect???

 

https://www.sciencealert.com/why-herd-immunity-will-not-save-us-from-the-covid-19-pandemic/amp

 

Because...

 

Three and half years was not enough time to correct the problems he "inherited", but four more years will be.

This is the man who, in 2017 said, "Nobody knew healthcare was so complicated." Three years later, it's gotten worse, but we shouldn't blame him. He's not responsible, because this is a man incapable of taking responsibility. As long as his supporters are happy to make excuses for him, he doesn't have to be responsible for anything, or to anybody.

In the meantime, don't take any medicine you bought in a pet shop.

 

Nothing is ever Trump's fault according to his supporters. Just like this. Trump had months to start preparing for this but did worse than nothing. Trump actually suppressed even information about it let alone a government response.

 

Everything is always Trumps fault according to his detractors

 

The missing six weeks: how Trump failed the biggest test of his life
The president was aware of the danger from the coronavirus – but a lack of leadership has created an emergency of epic proportions

by Ed Pilkington and Tom McCarthy in New York

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/28/trump-coronavirus-politics-us-health-disaster

 

@shy guy

Another way you prove just what a partisan phony you are is you will post this from Fox News.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fe...f-ventilator-shortages-for-nearly-two-decades

But then try to turn around and claim The Guardian is Trump hating meaningless opinion.

 

Uh, when did Stumbles become so obsessed with Obama's but and why?

 

@shy guy

Why didn't Trump fix it? He's been president for more than three years. Why didn't Trump start wide scare testing like South Korea and other counters? Why did Trump fire the people who worked for the NSC Pandemic response director and disband it?

And why did Trump say these things?

Trump said: “We only have five people. Hopefully, everything’s going to be great.”

On 24 February, Trump claimed “the coronavirus is very much under control in the USA”

And why can't mentally track? That's the link you were too embarrassed to post with YOUR article.

 

Trump didn’t inherit shit, he brought in his business ideas which were fucked to begin with and his racist opinions that was the cherry on the top of a cluster fuck cake!!!

 

Dotard stated in February 2020 the US was sending 18 tons of masks, ventilators, etc. to China. If the cupboard was so bare, why make such a gesture?

Dotard has been President for 3+ years. You know full well FEMA, DHS, FBI, CIA, etc. brief Dotard and his administration yearly on needs of such event. Why is it in the last 3+ years Dotard never had anyone in his administration go through the cupboard to make sure the US is supplied?

 

Woodrow Wilson not only ignored warnings about the Spanish Flu but sent troop ships filled with people he knew to be potentially ill across and back from Europe. In some cases people were prosecuted for even talking about the flu because it was thought that such talk impeded the war effort. If you wish to equate this to Trump’s handling of this pandemic, be my guest.