Some ventilators sent to New York hospitals from the US national stockpile are arriving damaged or with missing parts.

The city is grappling with a surge of coronavirus cases and deaths. City and state officials are asking the federal government for additional ventilators.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California reported similar issues with ventilators in Los Angeles that had to be sent out for repairs.

A US Department of Health and Human Services spokesman said the agency was "unaware of any issues with ventilators provided to New York."

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Some ventilators sent to New York hospitals from a federal stockpile are arriving damaged and without crucial parts, Business Insider has found.

They're part of an emergency shipment of 4,000 ventilators delivered across the state last week to help hospitals combat the novel coronavirus, according to someone with direct knowledge of the matter who was not authorized to speak to the press. Half were earmarked for New York City, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Northwell Health, New York's largest healthcare provider, received more than 100 ventilators from the stockpile, some of which were missing hoses that pump air into patients' lungs, according to Terry Lynam, the health system's chief public-relations officer. Others lacked stands that prop up the machines, he said.

Northwell is in contact with the manufacturer to get more hoses but can operate the ventilators without the stands, Lynam said in an email. On Monday, Northwell received a large number of functioning ventilators and N95 respirators from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he added.

"We're certainly grateful for anything we can get," Lynam said.

NewYork-Presbyterian, a network of 13 hospitals and medical centers in and around the city, received 300 ventilators from the stockpile last week. All of them were missing parts or had damaged parts, such as bacterial filters, the network of tubing that connects the ventilator to an intubated patient, or oxygen hoses. That's according to a person with direct knowledge of NewYork-Presbyterian's situation.

NewYork-Presbyterian didn't respond to requests for comment.

It's unknown how many nonworking ventilators in total were shipped to New York hospitals.

"The Strategic National Stockpile is unaware of any issues with ventilators provided to New York," a US Department of Health and Human Services representative said. "All ventilators deployed from the SNS are in operating condition and maintained based on the original manufacturer's specifications outlined in the service manual."

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Over the weekend, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced that Los Angeles received 170 broken ventilators from the stockpile and had to ship them out for repair. The state has received 4,252 ventilators to date, 1,000 of which need to be refurbished.

The problems with the ventilators are just one of several issues with gear coming from the US's emergency stockpile during the coronavirus pandemic. Others have reported expired equipment and insufficient quantities of protective gear such as respirators.

In an email, a representative for NYC Health and Hospitals, the city's public hospital system, said the system's ventilators from the stockpile were fine to the person's knowledge, but the person did not comment on how many the system received in total.

De Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo have made desperate pleas for more ventilators as New York has rapidly emerged as the center of the US coronavirus outbreak.

Several hospitals in New York are already overwhelmed as the city's caseload exploded past 25,000 last week, Business Insider's Lydia Ramsey reported on Friday. They're triaging a flood of coronavirus patients every day, intubating patients in their 20s and 30s, and running low on ventilators.

Nationally, modeling by the Harvard Global Health Institute suggests the US could require up to 400,000 more ventilators, but no more than 20,000 remain in the national stockpile.

This article was updated March 31 to include comment from the US Department of Health and Human Services. It was previously updated to correct the number of ventilators that Northwell Health received from the government, after a spokesman updated the information that was initially provided.