KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As COVID-19 cases have surged in southwest Missouri, hospitals in the area reported ventilator shortages over the weekend.
Last weekend, Erik Frederick, Mercy Springfield chief administrative officer, tweeted that the hospital had spent the night looking for more ventilators after receiving more COVID-19 patients.
On Thursday, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said the state has over 750 ventilators available for hospitals who need them.
"I don't think you want to go out there and be telling the public things that are not true, example when they say there's a ventilator or a hospital ran out of ventilators," Parson said.
Parson said neither Mercy Springfield or the Missouri Hospital Association had reached out to the state for ventilator assistance.
"They haven't asked for it, the hospital association hasn't not asked for any, we've been in contact with them constantly," Parson said. "So to say something like that and try to put that fear in people is totally wrong."
In a tweet on Thursday, Frederick clarified that Springfield Mercy was never in a position to not provide a patient with a ventilator if they needed one.
Instead, the hospital was so overwhelmed by the amount of patients who would need one, so it took action at making sure it would bring more ventilators in.
1/4 To clarify our vent situation: at no time did we have a patient need we couldn’t meet @MercySGF . Last weekend the number of ventilators in use escalated so quickly-something our care team has never experienced before-that we had to activate our plan to bring in more.
— Erik Frederick (@CAOMercySGF) July 8, 2021
Frederick said the hospital reached out to supply leaders and immediately had more delivered.
