Washington (CNN) Despite having committed to transferring 2,000 ventilators in military stocks to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services to fight the coronavirus outbreak, the Pentagon has not shipped any of them because the agencies have not asked for them or provided a shipping location, the Pentagon's top logistics official said Tuesday.
In order to ship the badly needed equipment, the Defense Department has to be given a location to send them by civilian authorities who have to decide where the items are most needed.
"There was discussion with HHS on where to send them. And then they said hey wait, we're trying to take a look at the demand that's required, and so we were asked to just wait while there was just some sorting through on that. And I won't speak on behalf of them, but we were in a position to provide 2,000," said Lt. General Giovanni Tuck.
Tuck said he had no details on the HHS decisions, but added that "we haven't provided any, because as of last night, we were asked to just hold on the ones that we have, and then we will push them when they're ready for them."
He emphasized there are 1,000 ventilators fully ready to be shipped as soon as the Pentagon gets a destination of where to send them. The other 1,000 can also be assembled and shipped within days of getting the order he indicated.
humanCharacter on April 1st, 2020 at 10:51 UTC »
As someone that’s worked in DOD logistics. This is understandable of the difficulty of such a simple task amid the chaos.
You gotta remember that everything being done has to be recorded and tracked. It’s not as simple as just sending supplies to a destination.
Here’s an idea of my todo list when working there:
You gotta figure out how many supplies, what trucks/planes/ships to use, fuel allowance, who to assign to send the supplies to, recipient departments to talk to. I have to talk to finance department to see if we have to funds to use a specific service. Now multiply with the number of hospitals making the same requests... great now we have to organize a priority list utilizing level of importance based on a 72 hour window, meaning we need to wait for epidemiologist’s input on where to allocate the supply.
In the entirety, this is mostly a communication issue with both the sender and the recipient.
This stuff is important because if not done properly, a truckload of precious ventilators could go missing.
All of a sudden the recipient is ghosting us for three hours when we’re trying to let them know that the supplies arrived.
apollyoneum1 on April 1st, 2020 at 08:25 UTC »
New. York. New York.
harpejjist on April 1st, 2020 at 05:05 UTC »
Literally any hospital in New York City, Bay Area, or anywhere the virus map looks very red.