WASHINGTON _ Public health officials are preparing to ration a limited supply of ventilators in the Strategic National Stockpile should hospitals be overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, whose access to the machines could mean the difference between life and death from the respiratory disease.
The Trump administration's primary goal is to avoid the depletion of that stockpile by securing new emergency sources of medical ventilation machines. But members of the White House coronavirus task force are gearing up for a flood of requests from states that could begin experiencing shortages in a matter of weeks.
Without treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, ventilator machines _ which provide oxygen to those who cannot breathe on their own _ can be a key factor in keeping critically ill patients alive.
