Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, slammed the Trump administration on Tuesday for failing to respond to the severity of the situation.
According to Governor Cuomo, hospitals are now experiencing equipment shortages, including ventilators, which are critical to keeping patients alive as COVID-19 cases peak — which officials now expect may happen in as soon as two or three weeks.
Following Cuomo’s critique, Vice President Mike Pence announced that the federal government would send 2,000 ventilators to New York. President Trump hinted on Fox News that more federal assistance could be dependent on Cuomo — and other governors — dropping their critiques of the White House.
New York has more than half of the total recorded coronavirus cases in the United States, though this is attributed in part to a large uptick in the number of studies performed in recent days. About half of the cases in New York are for people under the age of 45.