US has sent fans around the world, but does not find many now, finds the watchdog

US has sent fans around the world, but does not find many now, finds the watchdog

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One hundred and fifty of the fans went to countries with zero new cases per day on the date the government committed to sending life-saving machines abroad as the US was closer to a shortage of much-needed fans. According to the World Health Organization, Kiribati and Nauru, two of the countries that received a total of 20 ventilators, have never had a confirmed case of coronavirus.

From the end of May to the end of September, the previous administration committed to send 8722 fans to 43 countries, but with no clear criteria for determining which countries need fans or how many they should send, the GAO found.

In April, Trump claimed that the US was the ‘king of fans’, despite falsely claiming that the Obama administration had not let him go. In fact, the Department of Health and Human Services told CNN that the U.S. has 16,660 fans on hand – almost everything that has been in the country’s inventory since the end of the previous government – with another 2,425 maintenance. But there was still a severe shortage worldwide, and the US reached the peak of its first wave of infections, with about 2,000 deaths a day in mid-April.

When the pandemic began to escalate in late March, Trump produced himself on the Defense Act to increase the production of fans and N95 masks, two key components in the fight against the coronavirus.

In May, the US International Development Agency began delivering the first fans abroad, the GAO reported, with initial deliveries to South Africa, El Salvador and Russia.

The National Security Council instructed USAID on decisions regarding “fan donations, including the countries that received them, quantities and manufacturers.” But neither USAID nor the NSC provided any information on how payout decisions were made.

The report did not respond to GAO questions.

The distribution of fans was not part of USAID’s initial plan for Covid’s response, which further hampered the effort.

Nearly all of the 8,722 fans were deployed by December, but USAID had no reliable way to locate the machines and had only ‘limited information’ about their locations, the report said. Only in December did USAID tell the GAO that it had begun a process to locate the fans, which includes gathering information from manufacturers, service providers, foreign ministries of health and partners.

The lack of knowledge regarding the location of the fans occurred despite the fact that the agency had money to locate the machines for long-term supervision.

Five countries accounted for almost half of the fans: Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa each received 1,000 machines, while El Salvador received 600 and Peru 500. But the needs in these countries differed greatly. El Salvador had 74 new cases and one death on the day USAID dedicated itself to the allocation of fans, while Brazil had 33,322 new cases and 1,046 deaths.

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