In New York State — the center of the nation’s outbreak, with 1,550 deaths so far and the peak not expected for another one to three weeks — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Tuesday that the country’s patchwork approach to the pandemic had made it harder to get desperately needed ventilators.
Mr. Cuomo said that New York had ordered 17,000 ventilators from China, only to find itself competing with other the other 49 states, other nations, and even the Federal Emergency Management Agency — leaving New York with a firm expectation of getting only 2,500 of its ordered ventilators over the next two weeks.
“We’re all trying to buy the same commodity, literally the same exact item,” Mr. Cuomo said, complaining that the competition was pitting the agencies against one another and driving up prices.
“What sense does this make?” he said “The federal government, FEMA, should have been the purchasing agent, buy everything, and then allocate it by need to the states. Why would you create a situation where the 50 states are competing with each other and then the federal government, and FEMA, comes in and competes with the rest of it?”
Mr. Cuomo, whose fact-filled, sometimes emotional coronavirus briefings have drawn a national audience in recent days, shared that the pandemic had now hit close as he commented Tuesday on the news that his younger brother, Chris Cuomo, the CNN anchor, had tested positive.
Governor Cuomo, who called Chris his “best friend,” said that his younger brother, who is 49, would be fine, saying that he was “young, in good shape, strong” — before teasing that he is “not as strong as he thinks.”
And he used his family anecdote to remind people that social distancing was important — saying how relieved he was that their 88-year-old mother, Matilda Cuomo, had stayed away from Chris and his family in recent days since she could have easily been infected.
