Tesla said it will produce ventilators at its Gigafactory in Buffalo, New York to support the city's hospitals amid the pandemic. New York is the worst affected state in the U.S.

"Giga New York will reopen for ventilator production as soon as humanly possible. We will do anything in our power to help the citizens of New York," Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said on Twitter.

Last Saturday, Musk tweeted that he "had a long engineering discussion with Medtronic about state-of-the-art ventilators."

Ventilators are in short supply in New York's hospitals due to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and are required to support patients with respiratory failure or having difficulty in breathing.

On Thursday, the United States reported more deaths from COVID-19 than ever before and overtook China in the number of confirmed infections. With 85,755 people testing positive, the situation in the U.S. has become worse than that of China and Italy, according to the latest data released by Johns Hopkins University.

New York is the worst affected U.S. state, having reported nearly 39,000 cases of infection and 466 deaths.

Other major automakers too are contributing resources to help deal with the coronavirus pandemic.

On Tuesday, Ford Motor said it is working with 3M and GE Healthcare to increase production of respirators for healthcare workers and ventilators for coronavirus patients.

Ford and 3M are partnering to increase the production of 3M's powered air-purifying respirators, or PAPRs. The automaker is exploring production of the new PAPR in a Ford facility in addition to 3M production.

Meanwhile, Ford and GE Healthcare are working together to expand production of a simplified version of GE Healthcare's existing ventilator design to support coronavirus patients. The ventilators could be produced at a Ford manufacturing site in addition to a GE location.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles said earlier in the week that it would manufacture more than 1 million protective face masks per month. The company will donate the face masks to police, EMTs and firefighters, as well as to workers in hospitals and care clinics.

General Motors said last Friday that it is collaborating with Ventec Life Systems to enable Ventec to increase production of its respiratory care products to support the growing fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

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