( Reuters) – On the final Thursday in March the Arkansas team in charge of acquiring ventilators believed they had actually scored a coup: a vendor had actually accepted offer them 500 of the breathing devices crucial to keeping COVID-19 clients alive at $19,000 each.
FILE PHOTO: Ventilators at the New York City Emergency Situation Management Storage facility are shipped out for circulation due to issues over the fast spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the Brooklyn borough of New york city City, U.S., March 24,2020 REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs/File Image
The next day they were informed the offer had vanished due to the fact that a purchaser representing New york city was offering to purchase 10,000 units, pay cash upfront and double the price, an offer the supplier might not turn down. Reuters could not separately confirm that New york city bought the ventilators.
Either way, for Arkansas, the look for the devices goes on.
” We still wish to acquire the 500,” said Dr. Steppe Mette, president of UAMS Medical Center in Little Rock, who is helping manage procurement of materials for the state. “There are profiteers all over the place.”
Arkansas might never ever require those ventilators. It has 785 across the state, the majority of which are not currently in use, and information from New york city and other locations in recent days recommend hospitalizations may be peaking.
In the previous week Louisiana and Arizona scaled back their requests for ventilators from the federal government, while Oregon, Washington and California offered up extra systems for usage by other states.
However the episode shows how some states have been muscled asi