SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The number of coronavirus patients in California intensive care units doubled overnight and manufacturers are stepping up to build equipment like ventilators to fill hospital shortages, Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Saturday.
He spoke from a Bloom Energy facility in Sunnyvale retrofitted to refurbish ventilators unusable after sitting idle for years in government stockpiles. Days before, the company had used the room for storage.
As Newsom talked, employees behind him wearing white coats and masks repaired machines.
Newsom said the state needs 10,000 ventilators quickly to treat a surge in COVID-19 patients who need assistance breathing. He said the state has identified 4,250 machines and is working to find more.
Overnight, the number of people in California intensive care units jumped from 200 to 410, Newsom said.
Manufacturing has to happen with a “sense of urgency” on a “Silicon Valley timeline,” he said at the Santa Clara County facility.
Newsom said 350 manufacturers have told him they want to convert their facilities, as Bloom Energy has, to start making needed equipment and supplies, from testing swabs to hand sanitizer.
“This is what we should be doing,” Bloom Energy CEO KR Sridhar said. “We are in this together.”
Sridhar’s company started with hundreds of ventilators California’s Department of Public Health had kept in storage. Now, it’s working on 150 broken ventilators federal officials sent to Los Angeles.
On “Monday, they’ll have those ventilators back to Los Angeles, all fixed,” Newsom said.
In total, local officials in Los Angeles have received 170 ventilators from the national stockpile. Federal officials have not yet fulfilled a separate request from California state government for more ventilators.
Sridhar knew “nothing about ventilators” just a few days ago, Newsom said. Now, California is relying on his company to fix them.
On Friday afternoon, California’s coronavirus death toll reached 101, according to the Department of Public Health. More than 4,600 people have tested positive, including 73 health care workers.
Nearly 120,000 people have tested positive nationwide, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Newsom has said he doesn’t want California to crowd smaller states out of the market for equipment and drive up costs. California companies can manufacture equipment for other states, too, he said Saturday.
Bloom Energy also has a facility in Delaware that’s being set up in the same way as the Sunnyvale plant so they can refurbish ventilators on the East Coast, Sridhar said.
“We don’t want to be selfish,” Newsom said.
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