Audit: Cuomo Spent $453M On 247,343 Medical Devices For COVID... State Used Only

[Ptarmigan]

Audit: Cuomo Spent $453M On 247,343 Medical Devices For COVID... State Used Only 3
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/audit-cuomo-spent-453m-247343-medical-devices-covid-state-used-only-3

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's handling of the Covid crisis wasn't just a health catastrophe, but a financial one too, according to a damning new audit report released Friday. The state government poured $453 million into building an enormous stockpile of medical equipment -- and only used 0.000012% of it.

According to state comptroller Tom DiNapoli, New York bought a staggering 247,343 medical devices, but only wound up using a laughable three pieces of equipment out of the vast horde. Worse, the waste was only compounded by the state's utter neglect of its fiduciary duties to taxpayers. Rather than finding buyers for the once-valuable assets, bureaucrats have been content to let the equipment age and decay in warehouses. As if the erosion of the stockpiles weren't bad enough, New York is also wasting money on storage costs.

“New York state bought hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of medical equipment at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, including ventilators and x-ray machines, that now sits unused in storage facilities across the state, missing recommended maintenance and costing taxpayers storage expenses,” said Napoli's office. Of the equipment that requires ongoing maintenance, auditors found that 90% of it is past due, with no process or contract in place to handle that need. Failure to keep up with maintenance risks voiding manufacturer warranties, and also rendering the equipment unusable in an emergency.

Talk about wasteful.

[SVPete]

The whole ventilators shtick was a fauxny Gotcha-Trump. Hospitals needing ventilators should have gone first to their city, then their county, then their state, and only as a last resort, to the Feds. Cuomo bypassed the first four layers of source (including the hospitals), and with MSM-shill collusion, pretended that Trump and Feds were the sole source. What Cuomo did did expect was that Trump acted quickly and flooded the nation with ventilators, far more than could be used.

What was not known in March and April 2020 was that ventilator were less useful than what was thought. That Cuomo and Hochul would lot the surplus equipment sit in warehouses and rot was unsurprising, as the State of NY and NYC had done exactly that with their ventilator stockpile in the 2010s.