Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has followed through on his promise to donate over 1,200 ventilators to medical facilities struggling to keep up with the Coronavirus Pandemic last Monday. California Governor Gavin Newsom has confirmed the delivery and touted the behaviour as “heroic”.
The ventilators are now being distributed with help from Elon Musk and his team and the authorities. During the briefing, Newsom said this about Musk and his hard-working team:
“Elon Musk: how about this? I told you a few days ago he was likely to have 1,000 ventilators this week. They arrived in Los Angeles, and Elon Musk is already working with the hospital association and others to get those ventilators out in real-time. It’s a heroic effort,” he said.
The ventilators had come from China, Elon stated on Twitter, due to their being too much supply over there. They were flown by Musk’s team to LA where they are continuing to be distributed for free to those areas that need them.
Yup, China had an oversupply, so we bought 1255 FDA-approved ResMed, Philips & Medtronic ventilators on Friday night & airshipped them to LA. If you want a free ventilator installed, please let us know!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2020
Medtronic, one of the producers of the ventilators, also hinted at Tesla and SpaceX doing more than just distributing these devices. The company hinted that Elon might have more to give in response to combatting the virus using Tesla and SpaceX facilities.
Addressing #COVID19 is a group effort. We are grateful for the discussion with @ElonMusk and @Tesla as we work across industries to solve problems and get patients and hospitals the tools they need to continue saving lives. We're all in this together. https://t.co/MdZ3u8k2nR
— Medtronic (@Medtronic) March 21, 2020
Despite Elon initially calling the panic surrounding the virus “dumb”, he’s doing plenty to help those who have been affected by the outbreak.
We’ll continue to update you on this as we move further. Stay safe everyone.
