As of May 3rd, 2021, with daily COVID deaths in India reaching 3,000 (official figures, 10,000 daily deaths (unofficial)), and news about oxygen concentrators (OCs) being in short supply, it will galvanize all the healthcare and planning organizations to push for an increase in the supply of OCs. Within a couple of weeks, as the foreign aid flows in and gets routed to hospitals, there will be an excess supply of OCs. The next bottleneck is going to be Ventilators. Ventilators are orders of magnitude more complex problem as they involve more extensive equipment, availability of trained staff, and installation of the equipment in the hospitals. They cost about USD 50k in the USA and INR 10-15 lakhs in India.

In the USA, in mid-2020, the US government commandeered GM and Ford to produce ventilators and that led to an excess supply of those devices (~100k), that are potentially collecting dust in the US strategic reserve. Unfortunately, the Indian government did not do anything like that.

Collectively, we should focus on helping hospitals with procuring and installing ventilators now before that becomes the next chokepoint

The objective of this petition is to provide a summary submission to share with your US Congressman, US Senator, and state representatives urging the release of some of the idle ventilators (stored at the US strategic reserve) to India.