Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Saturday that the federal government sent along 170 ventilators to Los Angeles that arrived "not working." A Silicon Valley company is working to make repairs.
Newsome learned of the broken ventilators in a conversation with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Friday and was quick to remedy the situation.
"Rather than lamenting about it, rather than complaining about it, rather than pointing fingers, rather than generating headlines in order to generate more stress and anxiety, we got a car and a truck," Newsom said. He then tweeted that Bloom Energy is working to make repairs on the broken machines.
The ventilators came from a national stockpile which is maintained by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Because COVID-19 can infect the lungs and cause breathing trouble, ventilators are a necessity in treating very sick patients.
According to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, it's possible to see as many as 31 patients who require ventilation for every available ventilator across the US.