Over the past 24 hours, the number of confirmed infections in the United States has increased by nearly 18,000. The message came the same day President Donald Trump approved the $ 2 billion crisis package.

At the same time, Donald Trump is changing the need for respirators in the country. Just a day earlier, he downplayed the need for an interview with Fox News.

- I don't think we need 40,000 or 30,000 respirators. If you go to a large hospital they sometimes only have two respirators and now they suddenly say they want 30,000, he said.

"No time to play games"

However, on Friday night, Swedish time, it sounded completely different. Now he forces the automotive giant General Motors to start manufacturing large-scale ventilators. With the help of legislation that was actually written for wartime, he runs the company in the negotiations.

According to Trump, US authorities believed they had agreed with GM that the company would manufacture 40,000 respirators. But GM then changed his mind and said they could only make 6,000 at the same time as they started demanding more pay, according to the president.

"We didn't have time to play games with them," the president noted on Friday night Swedish time.

Researcher: 300,000 respirators are required

Following Trump's statement, GM himself has said that as of April, they can start producing 10,000 respirators a month.

But the question is whether it will be enough. Health care in the United States today has access to 170,000 respirators and this also includes simpler variants that are not certain to be effective enough for a corona patient. According to US researchers, the country may need 300,000 respirators at the same time as the pandemic continues.