washington president donald trump whos taken to calling the us the king of ventilators is making plans to ship 8000 of the breathing machines to foreign countries by the end of july to help in their fight against the coronavirusthats a long way from the early days of the virus when us medical workers were wondering if a shortage of ventilators would force them to make painful decisions about which patients would get themcoronavirus lockdown latest updatesnow the us has a surplus and the president is sharing them with other countries a goodwill gesture that also helps him offset criticism about his own early response to the pandemicthe white house did not respond to a request for specifics about how many ventilators have been sent so far or the criteria for determining which countries will get them but an administration official familiar with the effort provided the 8000 figure as part of a list of actions aimed at supporting health systems abroad the official was not authorized to discuss the projection publicly and spoke only on condition of anonymitywe have nine factories that are throwing out ventilators at numbers that nobody can believe theres not been anything like that since the second world war trump said fridaytrump said the us was giving the breathing machines to some countries it was unclear if some nations would pay for the ventilators which cost 5000 to 30000 depending on the modelmore on covid19 coronavirus pandemic complete coverage lockdown 30 whats allowed and whats not in the three zones its time to mask up and stay safe join tois maskindia campaign mhas guidelines for home isolation trust the newspaper for your daily verified newsin a certain way id like them to be donations i really do i think its good will trump said earlier in the weekits hard to say you have to pay us in order to save people from dying the machines shipped to other countries do not come from the national stockpile which has about 12000 ready to be deployed to us jurisdictions the us stockpile which is maintained by the department of health and human services is being replenished with thousands of ventilators manufactured under the defense production actinitially it was very scary and we had a lot of states requesting numbers that could not be supplied jared kushner an adviser to the president and trumps soninlaw said friday during a white house meeting with republican members of congressthe president wanted to make sure that anybody in this country who needed a ventilator would get a ventilator he saw what was happening in italy where people were dying in hospitals and not able to get the care they needed and the president said i dont want that to happen in america kushner said the administration used the defense production act to approve about 10 contracts with companies to make ventilators last year the united states made about 30000 ventilators kushner said this year in just a fourmonth period the