U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams on Wednesday said there’s “every chance” that the supply of ventilators for people diagnosed with the coronavirus isn’t going to be enough to meet demand.
“The best way to not run out of ventilators or [protective equipment] is to make sure you drive down demand so you don’t need them,” Dr. Adams said on NBC’s “Today” program. “I want Americans to know: We have a national strategic stockpile. We’re working with public and private partnerships to increase production, but that’s on the supply side.”
“If our curve goes the way of Italy, there is every chance that we could run out of devices,” he said. “[That’s] why it’s so important that we lean into these mitigation efforts now, drive down demand, flatten that curve.”
Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said Tuesday that the Pentagon is prepared to contribute 5 million respirator masks and other protective equipment and up to 2,000 ventilators to the Department of Health and Human Services as part of the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
The administration on Monday also announced guidelines telling Americans to steer clear of crowds of more than 10 people and avoid discretionary travel for 15 days.
“Fifteen days is likely not going to be enough to get us all the way through, but we really need to lean into it now so that we can bend the curve in the next 15 days and at that point, we’ll reassess,” Dr. Adams said.
He said he thinks the country has turned a corner in terms of people grasping the seriousness of the situation and on testing for the virus.
“When we look at the data, our numbers are where Italy’s were two to three weeks ago,” he said. “So we really have a choice to make right now as a nation: Do we want to go the way of Italy and see our numbers increase rapidly, or do we want to go the way of South Korea and China who aggressively leaned into mitigation measures and were actually able to level off their peak?”
The number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. now tops 6,400 and there are cases in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. There have been more than 100 coronavirus-related deaths.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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