Trump to sell ventilators to developing countries

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s administration said on Friday it would sell ventilators to at least four developing countries to fight the coronavirus, saying US needs were being met.

Trump said he spoke by telephone to the presidents of Indonesia, Ecuador, El Salvador and Honduras and promised that the United States would send the vital medical equipment.

"We will be sending them desperately needed Ventilators, of which we have recently manufactured many, and helping them in other ways," Trump wrote on Twitter of his call to President Lenin Moreno of Ecuador, which has seen a spike in coronavirus cases.

Michael Kozak, the top US diplomat for Latin America, confirmed the United States was selling the ventilators.

"We’re seeing our own needs met; we can become an exporter again," Kozak told reporters. "I think in many of these cases that the countries just want to buy them. They aren’t asking us for financing," he said. But Kozak said some countries may use assistance from the US to make the purchases.

Governors led by New York’s Andrew Cuomo said they were seriously short of ventilators at the start of the pandemic and had faulted the federal government. But Cuomo last week said New York would send ventilators to Michigan and Maryland as the situation had stabilized in his own state -- the worst-hit by the pandemic that has killed more than 50,000 people in the US.