Elon Musk promised to give California hospitals more than 1,000 ventilators weeks ago. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said none of them have shown up, CNN reports.
In late March, the Tesla CEO offered to donate 1,255 FDA-approved ventilators to California hospitals that he purchased from an oversupply in China.
On Wednesday, Newsom’s office said the promised ventilators have not reached any hospitals.
"Elon Musk and his team told the state that he had procured ventilators and wanted to distribute them directly to hospitals with shortages," a spokesperson for the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services told CNN. "The Administration is communicating every day with hospitals across the state about their ventilator supply and to date we have not heard of any hospital system that has received a ventilator directly from Tesla or Musk.”
Musk took to Twitter to call out CNN and asked Newsom to “fix this misunderstanding.”
In additional Tweets, Musk shared screenshots of emails between him and a Los Angeles County health department official from March 27, indicating the ventilators had been received.
Another picture showed part of an email from the CEO of Mammoth Hospital in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., stating that the ventilators "give us a fighting chance." Many coronavirus patients require ventilators.
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