According to a new report from The New York Times, more than 2,000 ventilators in the federal stockpile can’t be deployed because they were not properly maintained while they were in storage.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the federal government is withholding 10,000 ventilators from distribution because of an anticipated surge in Covid-19 cases. But an additional 2,109 ventilators are out of commission because maintenance of the devices was halted during a contracting dispute, the Times reported Wednesday.
States are scrambling for ventilators and requesting thousands of the devices from the federal government, only to receive a few hundred. Trump has insisted that states are requesting more ventilators than they need. When its contract with Vyaire Medical to maintain some of the stockpile ventilators expired at the end of August, the government awarded a broader contract to Agiliti [which officially took over the contract in January 2020], according to the Times.
Something seems off. The vents we are seeing come in from FEMA haven’t been maintained in years and years. Wonder what the service contract between the government and Vyaire covered as far as models, locations where these were stored, and what service activities were to be performed under that agreement. A vent contract lapsing for 5 months is not the issue, since we know as long as the service on these vents were up to date the next PM probably wasn’t even due in that 5 months.
Note: this is my own opinion, not that of my employer.