Tesla buys 1,255 ventilators from China and delivers them to Los Angeles

A few days ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company is considering building ventilators in its factories, given the dire need for them in many U.S. hospitals which are fighting the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. 

Now, Tesla has actually delivered the ventilators, though the company didn’t build them itself. 

According to Musk, the company bought 1,255 ventilators from China on Friday and shipped them to Los Angeles. 

Musk also thanked Tesla’s team in China, China’s Customs Authority and LAX customs for “acting so swiftly.”

At a press conference Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom said that 1,000 ventilators have arrived from Tesla. “Elon Musk (…) I’ve told you a few days ago, that he was likely to have a 1,000 ventilators this week. They’ve arrived in Los Angeles and Elon Musk is already working with the hospital association and others, to get those ventilators out in real time,” he said. 

The ventilators are extremely important as they’re used in treating critical COVID-19 (the disease caused by coronavirus) patients. A recent estimate from the Society of Critical Care Medicine said that 960,000 people may need to be put on ventilators due to the outbreak, and the U.S. only has about 200,000 of them. 

Musk’s focus on ventilators came roughly at the same time when Tesla had to partially shut down its factory in Fremont, California due to shelter-in-place orders. Musk’s initial claim — about manufacturing the ventilators in Tesla factories — was met with skepticism, with some experts claiming that such an endeavor might prove harder than the Tesla CEO thinks. 

Musk also made headlines with his repeated comments on the coronavirus outbreak, in which he claimed that the panic surrounding the virus is more dangerous than the virus itself. Last week, he tweeted that the “danger of panic still far exceeds danger of corona imo,” and the week before that, he tweeted “the coronavirus panic is dumb.” 

Other tech giants have joined the fight against the coronavirus outbreak in various ways. Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company is donating “millions of masks for health professionals in the U.S. and Europe.” Amazon said Monday it will deliver at-home test kits for the virus in Seattle’s King County. And Google recently launched a website providing information about the outbreak. 

COVID-19 has so far killed more than 14,600 and infected more than 334,000 people. The outbreak has been worsening in the U.S. in recent weeks, with more than 43,530 confirmed cases and 542 deaths.