NYC 10 Days Away From Widespread Medical Supply Shortage: Mayor

NEW YORK CITY — New York City is on track to run out of fundamental medical supplies like ventilators in just 10 days, Mayor Bill de Blasio said early Sunday.

In a pair of television interviews Sunday, de Blasio again called on President Donald Trump to invoke the federal Defense Production Act to speed up production of ventilators and personal protective gear for health care workers and first responders, as well as mobilize the U.S. military to bring medical equipment to New York.

At least 60 people in New York City have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, de Blasio said Sunday morning. Roughly 1,450 people are hospitalized and 370 are in intensive care units, city officials said late Saturday.

"If there are ventilators being produced anywhere in the country, we need to get them to New York — not weeks from now or months from now, in the next 10 days," de Blasio said during an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday. "If the president doesn't act, people will die who could have lived otherwise."

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City officials say New York needs 15,000 ventilators, three million N95 masks, 50 million surgical masks and 25 million each of surgical gowns, cover-alls, gloves and face masks to be able to handle the growing number of cases of COVID-19.

At a press conference Friday, Trump told reporters that several U.S. companies had already been identified to produce ventilators. The federal government also has 20,000 ventilators on standby, according to Vice President Mike Pence, who is leading the administration's COVID-19 task force.

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