President Trump says he's intent on building the nation’s stockpile of ventilators, masks and other equipment to meet future health threats.
Trump says his administration has awarded contracts for nearly 200,000 ventilators and 800,000 N95 respirators and facemasks. He says his goal is to produce “everything America needs for ourselves and then export to the world, including medicines.”
Trump’s comments came at a medical equipment distributor in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he was thanking workers in a key battleground state. The comments came on the same day that a federal whistleblower testified before a House panel about his repeated efforts to jump-start U.S. production of respirator masks that he says went nowhere.
"Our effort begins by dramatically increasing our reserves. Instead of one to three weeks worth of supplies - which we had less than that, the U.S. government will now stockpile three whole months much of it made in the USA. My administration has already awarded contracts for approximately 200,000 ventilators which we're building ourselves. And now that we're restocking all of those great things are happening with ventilators. My administration has also ordered 800,000,095 respirators and face masks - face masks also we're making here."
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
