Fox News contributor Dr. Nicole Saphier tweeted about the very real need for ventilators one day after President Donald Trump questioned how many were really needed to battle Coronavirus on the network.
“Regardless of what anyone says, ventilators are low in supply and we need as many as we can possibly get while we continue to #SlowTheSpread,” the doctor tweeted.
Thursday night on “Hannity,” Trump cast doubt on the numbers of needed ventilators being quoted by American governors, particularly New York’s Andrew Cuomo.
“I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they’re going to be. I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You know, you go into major hospitals sometimes and they’ll have two ventilators and now all of a sudden they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?’”
“A lot of equipment is being asked for that I don’t think they need,” said the president, who has also made clear his goal to end at-home social distancing by Easter during a Fox News town hall earlier in the week.
A few hours after that, during a press conference, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus taskforce, added that the timeline “is really very flexible.”
“We just had a conversation with the president in the Oval Office talking about, you know, ‘You can look at a date but you’ve got to be very flexible.’ On a — literally — day-by-day and week-by-week basis, you need to evaluate the feasibility of what you’re trying to do,” he said.