Early on during the pandemic, the state of New York spent millions of dollars on equipment that was aimed at aiding COVID patients, much of which is currently dormant and with no plans to be used.
The state acquired 8,555 ventilators at a cost of $166 million and 1,179 X-ray machines for $86.4 million, state officials told POLITICO this month. And now they’re stacked in warehouses across New York with no plans to distribute them or put them to any immediate use; Covid treatments have largely moved away from ventilators, and hospitals say they have plenty available to deal with their immediate needs.
New York is already starting to dispose of 700,000 gallons of expired hand sanitizer made in 2020 by people serving time at New York prisons in 2020 — a process that will take 44 weeks to complete by shipping a whopping 168 trailer loads 130 miles from Utica to Rochester at a cost of $2.3 million.
The ventilator stockpile, which the state is paying National Guard officers to manage, is the latest example of the equipment left behind after states and national governments went on pandemic-fueled spending sprees as Covid left a deadly wake across the globe.
Read the full story at Politico.
