Apr 15, 2020 - Health

Hospitals to share ventilators while production scales up

President Trump. Photo: MANDEL NGAN / Contributor

The Trump administration and 20 major health care systems launched a new ventilator loan program that will allow hospitals to ship unused machines to areas where they are needed most to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Why it matters: The "dynamic ventilator reserve" program will help hospitals deal with a shortage of the life-saving machines while private industry scrambles to crank up production.

General Motors started manufacturing ventilators on Tuesday under a $489.4 million federal contract. But it will take until August to produce all 30,000 the government ordered under the Defense Production Act.

Driving the news: The ventilator loan program announced at Tuesday's White House coronavirus briefing is something that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo had been pushing for weeks as conditions worsened in New York City.

Cuomo said New York needed 40,000 ventilators to meet surge demand, and begged other states to send their unused machines, saying he would personally drive them back when the state's peak had passed.

The big picture: Trump has enlisted automakers and other companies to increase ventilator production to replenish U.S. stockpiles.

The U.S. will manufacture 150,000 to 200,000 ventilators by the end of the year — "far more than we'll ever need" — up from 30,000 last year, the president said.
Currently, there are about 10,000 ventilators in the Strategic National Stockpile, "ready to move, should we need them," he said.

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Axios

Updated 11 hours ago - Health

U.S. coronavirus updates

Data: The Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins; Map: Andrew Witherspoon/Axios. This graphic includes "probable deaths" that New York City began reporting on April 14.

The Department of Health and Human Services moved on Thursday to require that an individual's race, ethnicity, age and sex be submitted to the agency with novel coronavirus test results.

Why it matters: Some cities and states have reported the virus is killing black people at disproportionately high rates. There are gaps in the national picture of how many people of color are affected, since the data has not been a requirement for states to collect or disclose.

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Marisa Fernandez

May 22, 2020 - Health

Update: Study linking hydroxychloroquine to increased death risk is retracted

Hydroxychloroquine. Photo: George Frey/AFP via Getty Images

Editor’s note: The study referenced in this story has been retracted by the medical journal The Lancet due to questions on the veracity of its primary data sources. Read more here.

Coronavirus patients who took hydroxychloroquine or its related drug chloroquine were more likely to die or develop an irregular heart rhythm that can lead to sudden cardiac death, compared to those who did nothing, a retrospective review published in The Lancet shows.

Why it matters: Despite warnings from the Food and Drug Administration, President Trump has insisted the anti-malarial drug as a "game-changer" and admitted he has taken it as a preventative even though the drug is unproven.

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Margaret Harding McGill

7 mins ago - Technology

As techlash heats up again, here's who's stoking the fire

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

As controversies around online speech rage against a backdrop of racial tension, presidential provocation and a pandemic, a handful of companies, lawmakers and advocacy groups have continued to promote a backlash against Big Tech.

The big picture: Companies like Facebook and Google got a reputational boost at the start of the coronavirus lockdown, but that respite from criticism proved brief. They're now once again walking a minefield of regulatory investigations, public criticism and legislative threats over antitrust concerns, content moderation and privacy concerns.

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