Elon Musk says he’ll repurpose factories to build ventilators if there’s a shortage. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, in his usual fashion, took to Twitter to underline how panic-induced overallocation of resources for coronavirus treatments may “come at expense of treating other illnesses.”
On being asked whether he’d be open to repurposing his factories for manufacturing ventilators, Musk claimed: “We will make ventilators if there is a shortage.”
Ventilators are fundamentally essential medical equipment that allow patients in critical conditions to breathe by mechanically transmitting breathable air into and out of the lungs. Since coronavirus primarily infects people’s lungs, countries facing an overwhelming rise of cases like the United States and Italy are running out of ventilators.
With factories closing down and employees in quarantine, medical companies too have been unable to keep up and are already at capacity — supplying only a fraction of the required volume.
“The reality is there is absolutely not enough. We see that in Italy, we saw that in China, we see it in France and other countries. We could sell I don’t know how many. Italy wanted to order 4,000, but there’s not a chance. We sent them something like 400,” Andreas Wieland, the chief executive of Hamilton Medical in Switzerland, one of the world’s largest makers of ventilators told the NYTimes.
Elon Musk has a penchant for boasting on Twitter and a lot of those bold claims often don’t translate into reality. As Tesla rushes to deliver its latest Model Y SUV on time, Musk has refused to put some of his factories on lockdown despite shelter-in-place orders. While Tesla had to shut down its Shanghai, it’s mostly business as usual at the car maker’s Fremont factory in California.
“I’d like to be super clear that if you feel the slightest bit ill or even uncomfortable, please do not feel obligated to come to work. I will personally be at work, but that’s just me. Totally OK if you want to stay home for any reason,” Musk wrote in an email to Tesla employees.