Coronavirus: Trump claims about New York ventilators 'ignorant' and 'grossly uninformed', says Cuomo

'All the projections say you could have an apex needing 140,000 beds and about 40,000 ventilators. Those are numbers. Not 'I think, I feel, I believe''

New York governor Andrew Cuomo has hit back at claims by President Donald Trump that the state is secretly stockpiling ventilators needed by coronavirus patients, calling them “ignorant” and “grossly uninformed.”

The president tweeted on Friday morning: “Thousand [sic] of Federal Government (delivered) Ventilators found in New York storage. N.Y. must distribute NOW!”

Governor Cuomo was asked about the president’s claim by CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz as he toured the field hospital being set up at Manhattan’s Jacob K Javits Convention Centre.

“That is incorrect and grossly uninformed,” said the governor. “The point is we have ventilators in a stockpile and we didn’t send them to the hospitals yet. Of course we didn’t, that’s the whole point. The hospitals don’t need them yet, the hospitals aren’t at their apex, the hospitals have enough ventilators today.”

He continued: “But the numbers are going up. We’re planning for an apex, a high point, in 21 days, that’s when we’ll need the 30,000 ventilators, not today. Right now, we’re putting them in a stockpile. So the point is that while they’re in the stockpile you must not need them, it's just ignorant.”

In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News on Thursday night, Trump also called into question the number of ventilators that states were asking for ahead of the peak in coronavirus cases.

“And you know, they'd say, like Governor Cuomo and others that say we want, you know, 30,000 of them, 30,000. All right. Think of this. You know, you go to hospitals, they'll have one in a hospital. And now, all of a sudden everybody's asking for these vast numbers,” said the president.

He doubled down on the claim later in the interview: “I don't believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You know, you're going to major hospitals sometimes, they'll have two ventilators. And now, all of a sudden, they're saying, can we order 30,000 ventilators?”

Governor Cuomo, whose leadership during the crisis has been widely praised, now wants to build a temporary hospital in each borough of New York City ahead of the peak of coronavirus cases, expected to occur in three weeks.

The governor confirmed in a tweet that the Javits Centre facility would be fully open on Monday.

“I congratulate FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers for their work at Javits. I thank the Javits staff. I thank the National Guard. You built a hospital in a week. You are the best of us,” he said.

Potential sites for extra hospital capacity include the New York Expo Center in the Bronx, the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, the Port Authority-owned Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, and the College of Staten Island. Plans are also being put forward to convert dorms and hotels into treatment units and to continue the stockpiling of equipment.

Speaking at the Javits Centre, the governor said: “All the projections say you could have an apex needing 140,000 beds and about 40,000 ventilators. Those are numbers. Not 'I think, I feel, I believe.' ... We’re following the data and the science, and that’s what the data and the science says.”

New York state has 44,635 confirmed cases, and a death toll of 519 as of Friday.