Governor to take ventilators for NYC as hospitals buckle

NEW YORK -- With coronavirus deaths surging in New York, the governor announced Friday he will use his authority to seize ventilators and protective gear from private hospitals and companies that aren't using them -- one of the most aggressive steps yet in the U.S. to relieve severe shortages of equipment needed to fight the scourge.

"If they want to sue me for borrowing their excess ventilators to save lives, let them sue me," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. He added he will eventually return the equipment or compensate the owners.

The executive order he said he would sign is aimed at the kind of shortages around the world that authorities say have caused health care workers to fall sick and forced doctors in Europe to make life-or-death decisions about which patients get a breathing machine. Cuomo has said New York could run out of ventilators next week.

The number of the people infected in the U.S. surpassed a quarter-million and the death toll climbed past 6,600, with New York state alone accounting for more than 2,900 dead, a surge of more than 560 in one day. Most of the dead are in New York City, where hospitals are getting swamped with patients. About 15,000 people were hospitalized statewide, most of them in the city.

Cuomo, who has complained in recent days that states are being forced to compete against each other for vital equipment in eBay-like bidding wars, called for a coordinated national approach that would send supplies and people to different areas as their needs peak.

More than 1,200 miles south, the situation grew more dire by the day in Louisiana, where more than 10,000 people have tested positive and deaths climbed to at least 370, up nearly 20 percent from the day before. Gov. John Bel Edwards warned that the hard-hit New Orleans area is projected to run out of ventilators by Tuesday and hospital beds five days later.

Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge has gone from one unit dedicated to coronavirus patients to seven. Nurse Christen Hyde said nurses call family members twice a day to update them on how their family members are doing, in some cases delivering bleak news.

"To have to call a family member and tell them that their family member is not doing well and they are probably going to be passing soon is just devastating," said Hyde, who has had four patients die.

As for the patients, "the last thing that they see is us telling them that they are going to have a tube placed down their throat to help them breathe," she said. "It's awful. It's horrible. It's really affected me."

In Florida, hundreds of passengers on a cruise ship where four people died were finally being allowed to disembark after a days-long standoff. More than a dozen critically ill patients were taken to hospitals, while people healthy enough to travel were taken to the airport for chartered flights home.