The president claimed during a March 29 press briefing that healthcare workers are hoarding ventilators and other hospital supplies, sparking backlash from medical professionals who say they are doing everything they can to deal with shortages.
During the March 30 meeting, the president said a “tremendous power in the business” told him that a hospital in New York City had increased its orders for face masks from between 10,000 and 20,000 to 300,000.
The president questioned why the hospital needed to increase its orders so dramatically and asked of the masks, “Are they going out the back door?”
“When you go from 10,000 masks to 300,000 masks … over the same period of time, there’s something going on,” he said.
He said he asked the city to look into the matter.
The president did not name his source, but suggested the person works for “the biggest distributor of products that distributes to many of the big hospitals and hospital chains.”
A survey from the Association for Professionals in Infection Control found that 31 percent of respondents said their organizations are almost completely out of face masks.
Read the transcript from the press briefing here.
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