U.S. President Donald Trump invoked a federal law on Friday ordering General Motors Co. to make ventilators for coronavirus patients under the Defense Production Act. Trump said the company wasn’t moving fast enough on their production.
GM was already working to manufacture ventilators and has partnered with Ventec Life Systems Inc., both companies said they were caught off guard by the announcement.
In his signed statement Trump directed “the secretary of Health and Human Services to use any and all authority available under the Defense Production Act to require General Motors to accept, perform, and prioritize federal contracts for ventilators.”
Trump went on to say:
Our negotiations with GM regarding its ability to supply ventilators have been productive, but our fight against the virus is too urgent to allow the give-and-take of the contracting process to continue to run its normal course, GM was wasting time.
Just hours before the order came in, GM announced that their plant in Kokomo, Indiana would be used to make the ventilators and they have been working around the clock preparing the plant for production. Included in the GM emailed statement, they said:
Our commitment to build Ventec’s high-quality critical care ventilator, VOCSN, has never wavered. The partnership between Ventec and GM combines global expertise in manufacturing quality and a joint commitment to safety to give medical professionals and patients access to life-saving technology as rapidly as possible. The entire GM team is proud to support this initiative.
The order by Trump shows just how important ventilators are for the the COVID-19 infection. Hospitals around the world are in very short supply, mainly because they normally only have around a dozen on hand. The way this virus attacks a person’s lungs is what makes these respirators so important, increasing the supply of oxygen in the body can mean the difference between life and death.
Trump publicly questioned NY Governor Andrew Cuomo’s assessment stating New York State will 30,000 ventilators to be able to treat this disease. When speaking with Sean Hannity from Fox News Trump said,
I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You know you go into major hospitals sometimes they’ll have two ventilators. And now all of a sudden they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?’
Therein lies the problem, if major hospitals only have a few ventilators and tens of thousands of people have the virus, then they will need thousands of ventilators. This, however, cannot be done quickly. Even Chinese plants that mass-produce them are having difficulties.
Wu Chuanpu is the director of Vedeng.com in China, one of the country’s main platforms for medical equipment and supplies. Wu explains that producing a ventilator is no easy task; “The expansion of the production line is very time-consuming and resource-intensive.” It also involves personnel training. It is too cumbersome.
While it’s certainly a good thing that the executive order was put in place, it needs to be known this will take time regardless of the President’s order.
Bloomberg reported experts as saying the act will be especially helpful for, “complex goods such as ventilators because this will allow the government to find direct goods and domestic substitutes where they are needed most.”
Ventec’s Chief Strategy Officer, Chris Brooks, said this action by The White House may help streamline where the ventilators get distributed, possibly overseen by the federal government. With the federal government handling distribution, it will allow Ventec “to do what we do, and that’s, make ventilators,” Brooks said.
President Trump’s signing off on this shows just how dire the situation is becoming:
This invocation of the DPA should demonstrate clearly to all that we will not hesitate to use the full authority of the federal government to combat this crisis.
