Elon Musk: Tesla has sent over 1,000 ventilators to hospitals
The Tesla CEO says the company provided ventilators to at least 50 hospitals "based on direct requests from their ICU wards."
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Tesla has sent more than 1,000 ventilators to 50 different hospitals, company founder and CEO Elon Musk tweeted Thursday. The hospitals include facilities in California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington and New York, which stands as the US epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic.
Partial list of hospitals to which Tesla sent ventilators pic.twitter.com/sfI6yuUbrM
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 16, 2020
Musk, who pledged to begin producing ventilators last month, calls the total of 1,165 devices part of a "partial list" of hospitals to which the company has provided equipment. The facilities named also include a number of overseas hospitals in countries like Spain. The largest shipment -- 59 ventilators -- went to NYC Health + Hospitals, per Musk's tweet.
"These were based on direct requests from their ICU wards, with exact specifications of each unit provided before shipment," Musk added.
Ventilators are a crucial tool in treating COVID-19, the disease that arises from the coronavirus, which can cause severe respiratory problems. There are now over 2 million confirmed cases globally, with more than 641,000 in the US as of Thursday.
However, later Thursday it was reported that multiple hospitals in California weren't sent ventilators by Tesla but rather bilevel positive airway pressure units. These are "used for breathing and airway support, reducing the need for certain patients to be placed on mechanical ventilation," Christina Ghaly, director of Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, told The San Francisco Chronicle.
Another hospital was reportedly sent continuous positive airway pressure units. Tesla and LA County Public Health didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
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