Ventilators

The Department of Defense is providing masks and ventilators from its reserves to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Choosing which patients to hook up to scarce ventilators is having a heavy emotional and psychological toll on doctors and nurses.

We can’t get more ventilators.

“The ventilators are to this war what missiles were to World War II,” Cuomo said.

The supply of masks and ventilators is either gone or quickly diminishing.

"We now have people who have been on ventilators for 20, 30 days," Cuomo said. "The longer you are on a ventilator, the more likely you are not going to come off the ventilator. That is what is happening."

New York is also looking at "splitting" ventilators — refitting one machine with two sets of tubes in order to assist two people simultaneously.

Ventilators move air in and out of a patient's lungs.

They refuse to allocate enough funds to buy new ventilators.

Several other groups are working on low-cost ventilators.