In late March, New York state paid an electrical engineer in Silicon Valley $69.1 million for 1,450 ventilators that were never delivered, BuzzFeed News reports.
A state official told BuzzFeed News the engineer, Yaron Oren-Pines, "was recommended to us by the White House coronavirus task force because they were doing business with him as well. I think everyone was genuinely trying to help each other out and get supplies."
On March 27, three days after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said he needed 30,000 ventilators, President Trump tweeted that General Motors and Ford needed to "GET GOING ON VENTILATORS, FAST!" Oren-Pines responded to Trump, saying, "We can supply ICU Ventilators, invasive and noninvasive. Have someone call me URGENT." Oren-Pines works in the mobile phone technology industry, BuzzFeed news reports, and does not appear to have any experience with medical devices or government contracting.
In early March, Cuomo signed an executive order to streamline getting much-needed medical equipment, allowing some payments for ventilators and personal protective equipment to go out before the orders were fulfilled. New York paid Oren-Pines $69.1 million on March 30, with Oren-Pines charging $47,656 for each ventilator — at least triple the price of top-of-the-line devices. This was the largest payment the New York Department of Health has made during the coronavirus pandemic.
With no ventilators ever delivered, the state's contract with Oren-Pines has been terminated, and a spokesperson for the New York Office of General Services told BuzzFeed News "a bulk of the money was returned to the state." Rich Azzopardi, a senior adviser to Cuomo, told BuzzFeed News that New York had "no choice but to overturn every rock to find ventilators and other needed equipment. States were forced to fend for themselves to purchase lifesaving supplies to combat a global pandemic and with all modeling showing a more severe spread of this virus with more hospitalizations and more fatalities." Catherine Garcia
On Thursday, the United States recorded 88,979 new coronavirus cases, the highest single-day count since the pandemic started.
The previous record was set on Saturday, when 83,734 cases were reported. Most regions are seeing a huge spike in cases, with Iowa, Illinois, and Ohio among the nine states shattering their records for new infections on Thursday. South Dakota and Wyoming also reported new highs for their seven-day average of deaths counted daily.
As of Thursday, there are more than 44,500 people hospitalized with the virus in the United States, an increase of 14,000 since the beginning of October, The Washington Post reports. In Utah, Gov. Gary Herbert (R) tweeted that the state is "in a very serious situation. COVID-19 is the most devastating when hospitals are overwhelmed and unable to provide good care to everyone who needs it. We have seen this in Italy. We have seen this in New York. We could see this in Utah if things do not change."
Nearly nine million COVID-19 infections have been reported in the United States since January, with about 228,300 Americans dying from the virus. Catherine Garcia
United Airlines is trying out a plan to offer free COVID-19 tests to passengers heading abroad.
From Nov. 16 to Dec. 11, United will start offering rapid coronavirus tests to people boarding flights from the airline's Newark, New Jersey, hub to London's Heathrow airport. The Abbott ID Now rapid tests will be available for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday flights, and passengers will have to show up three hours early and schedule an appointment to be tested in United's lounge.
Passengers who refuse a test will be moved to other flights to "guarantee that essentially everyone on board just tested negative for COVID-19," a United spokesperson told CNN. Still, travelers arriving in the U.K. will have to quarantine for 14 days when they arrive, as COVID-19 cases are sharply rising both there and in the U.S. once again.
The COVID-19 pandemic has decimated the airline industry, and without a government intervention, airlines are trying whatever they can get passengers back on board. Kathryn Krawczyk
President Trump has received a dose of good polling news days ahead of the election — but it may not be enough to turn the tide.
In polls wrapping just a week before Election Day, Democratic nominee Joe Biden has posted no new gains in the swing states of Florida, Iowa, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, a Quinnipiac University survey out Thursday reveals. Meanwhile Trump's support has grown in Florida, Iowa, and Pennsylvania — and enough so in Florida and Iowa to be well in contention of winning.
In Florida, Biden has 46 percent to Trump's 42 percent, the poll of likely voters showed. That's a 6-point loss for Biden and a 2-point gain for Trump from Quinnipiac's poll earlier this month, in which Biden posted a massive 11-point lead. Biden also lost 4 points in Iowa as Trump gained 2, enough to give the incumbent a narrow 47-46 lead. Biden meanwhile maintains a solid 51-44 point lead in Pennsylvania and a 48-43 lead in Ohio, where Trump slid 4 points since earlier this month.
Analysts say a loss in Florida for Trump will likely cost him the whole election, but Biden has enough support in the Midwest to override a Florida slump. A CNN poll out late Wednesday — its last before election day — gives Biden a 12-point lead over Trump nationally, also a gain of 4 points for Trump from CNN's previous poll.
Quinnipiac surveyed between 1,186 to 1,324 likely voters from Oct. 23–27 in each of the states, with margins of error between 2.7 and 2.9 percentage points. Kathryn Krawczyk
At least one swing state may be spared the political controversy of a late absentee ballot count seemingly changing its 2020 election results.
Every U.S. state is receiving a boatload more mail-in ballots than it usually does during a typical election year, and four of them — Alabama, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — won't even be able to open those ballots until Election Day. This almost guarantees a delayed result from those four states, but Wisconsin is confident it'll have everything set by the morning after the election, local election officials tell NBC News affiliate WTMJ Milwaukee.
Wisconsin's electoral votes will be critical in determining the winner of the 2020 election, as the previously Democratic state went for President Trump in 2016. County clerks all say they'll count ballots nonstop until they're finished, and expect results at 9:30 p.m. at the earliest. Waukesha County, the third most populous in the state, says its count will wrap around 3 a.m. And Milwaukee County, home to nearly a million people, expects to be done by 6 a.m. Wednesday.
Meanwhile in Pennsylvania, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) is preparing for a long haul, including pushback from Republicans. The state accepts all absentee ballots that were mailed before Election Day even if they arrive later, meaning a count to finalize the swing state's results could take days. Shapiro fears Republicans may use these late ballots "as a hook to challenge all mail-in ballots," and a court may then halt the count of all absentee ballots while the challenge is considered, he told The Washington Post. So to prepare, Pennsylvania officials will separate late-arriving ballots in hopes of avoiding a total counting shutdown.
Find when every state expects to count its absentee ballots at The New York Times. Kathryn Krawczyk