Earlier this week Tesla CEO Elon Musk offered to send 1,200 “FDA-approved ventilators,” purchased from China, to hospitals in need for free, the Hill reports.
And he’s already made good on that promise, as the NYC Health System shared photos of some those promised ventilators arriving on Tuesday at a hospital in Elmhurst, New York.
But there is one major problem with Musk’s free “FDA-approved ventilators”: they’re actually 5-year-old BiPAP machines, which aren’t powerful enough to use in the ICU and could actually just spread the COVID-19 virus further, Yahoo! News reports.
According to a NPR report, BiPAP and CPAP machines have been used to help patients with respiratory problems, but since mid-February the American Society of Anesthesiologists has strongly discouraged their use in treating the coronavirus, saying the machines could pump the virus out of someone’s lungs and into the air, increasing the risk of exposure to those around them.
Musk took to Twitter to defend himself, blaming trolls and bot accounts for the criticism of his decision to send the non-invasive ventilators, and clarifying that the hospitals knew exactly what equipment he would be sending and confirmed they would be critical to treating the virus.
Newsweek reports that the FDA has, in fact, recently approved the use of non-invasive breathing aids if they are modified to become ventilators, but only during emergencies. This is already happening in New York but it is unclear whether or not some of the of BiPAP machines Musk sent — the discontinued ResMed s9 Elite model — can undergo this necessary modification, reports Gizmodo.
Even if converted to be more like a traditional ventilator, Gizmodo reports that the BiPAP machines will not be able to make a lifesaving difference in high-risk patients, but they could be helpful in treating lower-risk patients with less severe breathing problems.