Elon Musk’s promised 1,000 ventilators haven’t been delivered, California governor’s office says

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The 1,000 ventilators that Elon Musk promised California in an effort to help its hospitals cope with the coronavirus have not been delivered to its hospitals, said the office of governor Gavin Newsom.

On 23 March Gov Newsom announced that the machines, which can provide life-saving support to critical coronavirus patients, had already arrived​ in the state.

The equipment was due to be delivered straight to hospitals by Tesla, however, as of now, the governor’s office says no California hospital has received them, according to The Sacramento Bee.

California was one of a number of states promised the machines by Tesla when it was seeing a surge of Covid-19 patients.

The Independent has contacted both Tesla and the governors office for comment.

Mr Musk has since faced increasing scrutiny over his promises to donate machines to hospitals in the US struggling to cope with the amount of intensive Covid-19 patients.

The CEO was forced to defend sending non-invasive BiPAP machines to a hospital in New York, rather than invasive ventilators after a report by The Financial Times revealed the difference in the equipment he had purchased.

There have been claims that the BiPAP machines are not invasive enough in the treatment of the virus could actually potentially spread the virus by aerosolising it.

Mr Musk said that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo asked for both invasive and noninvasive machines.

The US Food and Drug Administration recently cleared both BiPAP and CPAP machines for use as stand-in devices when proper ventilators weren’t available.

Last Thursday the governor said the state has enough ventilators to cope with the outbreak, CNN reported after he announced the decision to lend 500 machines to other states across the US.

The Independent has requested comment from Gov. Newsom and Tesla.