How and where to allocate stockpiled ventilators during a pandemic

Lisa Koonin, Health Preparedness Partners, and colleagues from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta, GA), coauthored the article entitled "Strategies to Inform Allocation of Stockpiled Ventilators to Healthcare Facilities During a Pandemic." Prior to a pandemic, planners should determine existing inventories and facilities' ability to make use of additional ventilators in the event of a public health emergency. This information needs to be updated at the time of a pandemic. Determining where to allocate stockpiled ventilators should be based on an assessment of need, the consideration of ethical principles discussed in the article, the ability of facilities to absorb additional ventilators, and the ability to ensure access to ventilators for vulnerable or high-risk populations.

"Ventilators will be pivotal to saving countless lives in this COVID pandemic. Understanding CDC's plans and recommendations for state and local planners around ventilator management in this kind of crisis will be key for helping them make decisions under very difficult conditions," says Editor-in-Chief Thomas V. Inglesby, MD, Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Baltimore, MD.