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Where are 8,700 ventilators that Trump sent to 43 countries? Equipment worth $200M go missing: Report

On April 29, 2020, Trump had claimed, 'We became the king of ventilators... Now we have nine factories that are throwing out ventilators at numbers that nobody can believe'

US Government Accountability Office published a report on January 28 which states that at least 8,722 ventilators that were sent by the Donald Trump administration to other countries worth $200M as a form of aid in response to Covid-19 are now not traceable. The report was released to the public on January 29.

The report titled, "Critical Vaccine Distribution, Supply Chain, Program Integrity, and Other Challenges Require Focused Federal Attention" was about how the pandemic remains a significant obstacle to more robust economic activity.

In this report, under the title 'Ventilators Provided Abroad', the report explains how USAID provided 8,722 ventilators to 43 countries at a cost of about $200M and efforts are now being undertaken to trace each of them within recipient countries. The report also stated how GAO would be making 13 recommendations to federal agencies to improve recovery efforts to address critical gaps in the medical supply chain. While the efforts maintained records regarding how many ventilators were sent to which countries, there was no clear indication regarding the criteria based on which the ventilators were supplied.

For instance, the report claimed, "USAID provided 1,000 ventilators to Indonesia and Brazil, representing over 70 percent of total obligations for all COVID-19-related assistance to those countries, as of September 30, 2020. The obligations for 200 ventilators for Bolivia represented about 87 percent of total obligations for COVID-19-related assistance to that country."

In the report, the GAO condemned the US Agency for International Development, which carried out the administration's orders for the lack of clarity and decision making. 

In a tweet announcing the report to the public, the GAO wrote, "#COVID19 revealed vulnerabilities in medical and drug supply chains. Our #CARESAct review found that gov’t agencies don’t have complete data to identify & report on these vulnerabilities."

One must also note how in April, Trump had claimed that the US was "king of ventilators" as it had produced the machines domestically in large numbers to send to foreign countries as aid. In a speech on April 29, 2020, Trump had claimed, "We became the king of ventilators, thousands and thousands of ventilators." He then added, "We built, and we built, and we built. Now we have nine factories that are throwing out ventilators at numbers that nobody can believe. It was really — there’s not been anything like that, since the Second World War, where we did the same thing with other types of product.”

The report also indicated that among the thousands of ventilators that were sent to different countries, not all of the countries needed them, or were even able to use them. Take for instance Honduras, where aid of 100 ventilators was approved by a senior State Department official on June 11, only 72 cases were confirmed per 100,000 and that questions the credibility of allocation which then results in the funds that were allocated to provide the said aid. It was also reported that El Salvador, a country that was set to receive 600 ventilators, had just about 51 cases per 100,000 people at that point. In addition, Vietnam set to receive 100 ventilators had no deaths, and just a few hundred confirmed cases at that point.