OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada has ordered 30,000 new ventilators from Canadian companies but hopes that will end up being far more than this country will actually need.
Trudeau says more than 5,000 Canadian companies have answered the call for help to make everything from face masks and medical gowns to ventilators to help treat people afflicted with COVID-19.
He says the new ventilators will be ready "in the coming weeks."
In late March, it was estimated that Canada had around 5,000 ventilators already across the country.
Trudeau says ordering 30,000 more is intended to get more than we need as quickly as possible and he says if we needed them all it would be a very bad sign about how bad the virus has become in this country.
A few hundred Canadian patients are in intensive care because of COVID-19 but it's not clear how many are on ventilators, because provinces treat the numbers differently.
Trudeau also says Canada continues to work with the United States on securing imports of medical equipment ordered from American manufacturers.
The Canadian Press