Hunt for medical supplies creates marketplace of desperation

[Judi Lynn]

Brian Witte, Associated Press
Updated 11:20 am CDT, Saturday, April 4, 2020

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Shady middlemen, phantom shipments, prices soaring by the hour, goods flown in on a private plane.

What sounds like an organized-crime thriller is now the new reality for governors desperately trying to find the medical equipment their states need in the throes of a pandemic. With the federal stockpile dwindling fast, and the Trump administration limiting access to what’s left, state leaders are going to extraordinary measures on their own to secure faces masks, ventilators, gloves and other equipment essential to fighting the outbreak.

They’ve ventured into a global market-place one governor described as the “wild, wild, West,” only to compete against each other and their own federal government. They’ve watched the price of a ventilators double and masks go for 10 times their original price. They’ve turned to rich friends and businesses for help. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker enlisted NFL owner Robert Kraft to send the Patriots team plane to China to retrieve over a million masks.

In New York, an epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S., Gov. Andrew Cuomo has looked closer to home to secure ventilators, issuing an order that forces even private hospitals to redistribute ventilators to the hospitals most in need.

More:
https://www.chron.com/news/medical/article/Hunt-for-medical-supplies-creates-marketplace-of-15178952.php