Ford, GM and Tesla have been granted the “go ahead” to create ventilators to assist ease a shortage among the COVID-19 pandemic, President Donald Trump stated in a tweet Sunday that concluded with a challenge to auto executives to prove how good their companies are.

The Need For Ventilators

Ventilators are a crucial part of medical devices for patients who are hospitalized with COVID-19, a respiratory infection caused by the coronavirus. 

COVID-19 strikes the lungs and can produce severe respiratory distress symptoms and pneumonia. 

And as there is no clinically established treatment yet, ventilators are depended upon to help people breathe and battle the disease. 

There are around 160,000 ventilators in the United States and extra 12,700 in the National Strategic Supply, the NYT published.

The tweet accompanies an appeal Sunday morning from N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo for the central government to nationalize medical equipment purchase instead of giving it to individual states. 

President Trump giving speech | iTMunch

The Role of Cuomo

Cuomo is one of a developing group of executives to call for Trump to order companies to provide medical supplies under the Defense Production Act. 

This rule enables the federal government to enforce private industry to create materials required for national defence.

Without the nationalization, states are battling against each other for pieces of equipment, Cuomo said. 

Costs have spiked as a consequence, placing more stress on a health care system.

Many automakers stated last week they saw into the probability of manufacturing ventilators. 

G.M. stated on Friday that it is operating with Ventec Life Systems to support increase creation of respiratory care commodities such as ventilators that are required by an increasing number of hospitals as the COVID-19 pandemics expanded throughout the U.S. 

Ford reported in an email on Sunday that it stands available to support the organization, including the probability of building ventilators and additional equipment.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Saturday that he had a conversation with Medtronic regarding ventilators. 

Medtronic later verified those conversations in a tweet. 

He had earlier tweeted that SpaceX and Tesla will operate on ventilators, without giving specifics.

SEE ALSO: Lyft to give medical supply and meal distribution to combat the coronavirus pandemic

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