The U.S. Paid a Texas Company Nearly $70 Million for Ventilators That Were Unfit for COVID-19 Patients. Why?

To address the ventilator shortage in Spring 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. government purchased millions of dollars worth of ventilators from several companies, including the SAVe II+ model from AutoMedx, which had not yet been designed, reports the Washington Post. 

Defense Department medical workers who had been told to use the existing SAVe II device on COVID-19 patients quickly came to the conclusion that it was ill-suited for the coronavirus pandemic, and began to voice their consternation to each other in emails that were shared with The Washington Post.

One of the workers, who had been instructed to use the device if there were a surge of coronavirus patients, described it as “awful and under-powered.” Another raised concerns that using an ill-suited ventilator would “kill [COVID-19 patients] just as fast as no ventilator at all.”

Read more in the Washington Post.