General Motors begins dispatching ventilators for COVID-19 patients

General Motors has begun shipping out the first of thousands of ventilators it plans to manufacture in the coming months, a pledge it promised as part of a nearly $500 million contract awarded to the company by the federal government. 

The storied motor corporation says it will fabricate 30,000 ventilators through August through a partnership with the American medical device company Ventec. The company re-fitted a car parts plant in Kokomo, Indiana to manufacture the devices; the plant itself had previously been shuttered due to the pandemic. 

The novel coronavirus, in its most critical cases, results in severe respiratory distress that sometimes requires intubation. Health officials throughout March warned that the United States was perilously low on ventilators and that an expected surge of COVID-19 patients would leave countless Americans without a way to breathe at the peak of the pandemic. 

In the intervening weeks, the situation on the ground has become markedly more optimistic. New York State, the hardest-hit region in the United States, announced this week that it would be distributing dozens of unused ventilators to neighboring New Jersey. Earlier in the month, Washington State---viewed by some experts as a potential hotspot for the disease---shipped hundreds of surplus ventilators to New York. 

GM said it is distributing the ventilators to FEMA, as well as to hospitals in Chicago and Olympia Fields, Illinois.