Coronavirus: Tesla ventilators won’t arrive in time for apex, Cuomo says

‘Nobody can make you a ventilator right now in two weeks’

New York governor Andrew Cuomo has revealed that Tesla’s ventilators won’t be ready in time to help deal with the apex of the coronavirus pandemic.

During his daily briefing on Sunday, Mr Cuomo claimed that Tesla and General Motors will be unable to make ventilators in time because the logistics involved make it impossible.

“Nobody can make you a ventilator right now in two weeks,” he said. “That’s General Motors, that’s Ford, that’s Elon Musk. I don’t care how big and how powerful, you can’t make ventilators that fast because there are parts that have to come from other countries.”

Mr Cuomo added: “Their timeframe, frankly, doesn’t work for our immediate apex, because whether we’re talking two days or 10 days, you’re not going to make ventilators at that time.”

His aide, Melissa DeRosa, said that Tesla are only planning on building one part of a ventilator and that nothing has materialised from the company as of yet.

Mr Cuomo told reporters: “We could be very near the apex ... we won’t know until the next few days.”

Tesla released a video on its YouTube page on Sunday, explaining that it is using car parts to make the ventilators.

“We’re trying to make some ventilators out of some car parts, so that we can help out the medical industry without taking away from their supply,” one of their engineers revealed.

Last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk defended sending non-invasive BiPaP machines to a hospital in New York, rather than invasive ventilators.

Mr Musk was criticised online, as some claimed that the ventilators wouldn’t be invasive enough to help tackle the virus, but he said that the governor asked for invasive and non-invasive machines.

“Invasive ventilators are for worst case patients. Survival rate at that point is low, as Gov Cuomo has pointed out. Nonetheless, we start delivery of intratracheal Medtronic units in NYC tonight,” Mr Musk said.

According to a tracking project hosted by Johns Hopkins University, upwards of 347,003 people have tested positive for coronavirus in the US. The death toll has reached at least 10,335.