Skip to main content

New story in Health from Time: FEMA Administrator Says Agency Will Use The Defense Production Act ‘For The First Time Today’ to Obtain 60,000 Coronavirus Testing Kits



In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Peter Gaynor said the agency will use the Defense Production Act (DPA) “for the first time today” to obtain 60,000 coronavirus test kits.

“We’re actually going to use the DPA for the first time today. There’s some test kits we need to get our hands on,” Gaynor said. He added that FEMA would insert “DPA language” into contracts they have for the production of 500 million masks.

The DPA is a Cold War-era law that gives the president the power to control the distribution of necessary resources that are “essential to the national defense.” On March 18, President Donald Trump signed an executive order invoking the DPA to combat the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by novel coronavirus.

However, he’s faced criticism over the past few days not using the act’s powers to mandate the production of medical supplies, despite reports of dwindling amounts of masks, gloves, ventilators and coronavirus tests around the U.S..

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly asked the federal government to utilize the act to direct companies to build needed supplies such as gowns, masks and ventilators. During a Tuesday press conference, Cuomo doubled down on the request, responded to the 400 ventilators FEMA recently shipped to New York.

“What am I going to do with 400 ventilators, when I need 30,000?” he said. “You pick the 26,000 people who are going to die because you only sent 400 ventilators.”

As on Tuesday morning ET, New York had at least 23,230 confirmed cases out of the 47,206 confirmed cases in the U.S., according to a tracker by Johns Hopkins University.

On Tuesday, Gaynor told CNN that when using the DPA the administration “wanted to be thoughtful about not upsetting the balance, making sure that we can get it out to market and the federal government [does] not consume it all.”

“So we’re going to use it, we’re going to use it when we need it, and we’re going to use it today,” said added.

Gaynor did not say if FEMA would use the DPA to mandate the production of other medical supplies, including masks, gloves or ventilators.

Labels

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

New story in Health from Time: Here’s How Quickly Coronavirus Is Spreading in Your State

The novel coronavirus pandemic is a global crisis, a national emergency and a local nightmare. But while a great deal of the focus in the U.S. has been on the federal government’s response, widely criticized as slow and halting , the picture on the ground remains very different in different parts of the country. A TIME analysis of the per capita spread of the epidemic in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. found considerable range in the rate of contagion, and, in some parts of the country, a significant disparity compared to the national figure. The U.S., unlike nations such as South Korea and now Italy , has yet to show signs of bringing the runaway spread of the virus under control. However, while no single state is yet showing strong signs of bending the curve , some are faring much worse than others. The following graphic plots the rise in the total confirmed cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents in each state, plotted by the day that each state reported its first case....
Read more

New video by gymvirtual on YouTube

Rutina para adelgazar | Ejercicios para perder peso en casa ♥ ♥ LÉEME / DESPLIÉGAME ♥ ♥ Hola a todos, hoy os traigo una rutina de cardio de 25 minutos para quemar grasa y adelgazar en casa. En la web https://ift.tt/39VJREp encontraréis los calendarios de entrenamiento tanto para principiantes como para avanzados. Si quieres conseguir tú transformación en solamente 12 semanas, entra ya en http://www.pgv12.com y elige el PLAN PGV12 que más se adapte a ti. Nuestro lema: YO PUEDO CON TODO Los hashtags: #GymVirtual #YPCT #YoPuedoConTodo #PGV12 ♡♡ ¡SUSCRÍBETE! ♡♡ http://www.youtube.com/user/gymvirtual ................................................................................................................................. ♡♡ PLAN DE ENTRENAMIENTO + NUTRICIÓN 12 SEMANAS♡♡ http://www.pgv12.com ................................................................................................................................. ♡♡¡ECHA UN VISTAZO A NUESTRA TIENDA ONLINE! ♡♡ https://ift.tt/2Un...
Read more

New story in Health from Time: After Cruise Ships and Nursing Homes, Will Universities Be the Next COVID-19 Tinderboxes?

The fall semester has yet to begin, but student athletes training for the season can already be found on college campuses across the U.S. And so can COVID-19. Since the start of July there have been at least two outbreaks among student athletes, coaches, and staff—with 37 infected at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill and 22 at Boise State . Clusters of infection have been traced to college town bars popular with students. A common misconception is that young people with COVID-19 don’t die and therefore college re-openings pose little risk. Sadly, this isn’t the case. COVID-19 deaths in the young are rare, but they happen. Universities across the U.S. are mourning the loss of students in the lead-up to the school year, including Joshua Bush , a 30-year old nursing student at the University of South Carolina, Trevor Syphus Lee , a 27-year old senior at Utah Valley University, and Juan Garcia , a 21-year old Penn State undergraduate. One might imagine th...
Read more