New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio | Hans Pennink/AP Photo De Blasio presses for medical supplies on phone call with Trump, Pence

NEW YORK — Mayor Bill de Blasio said he conveyed a dire scenario at city hospitals during a Sunday phone call with President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, warning that medical supplies could run out in a matter of days.

“I made clear… that we have the most urgent need in our hospital systems — particularly our public hospitals — when it comes to equipment and supplies,” de Blasio said during an interview on PIX11, adding “our first need is ventilators.”


He said he also asked for military medical personnel as the city builds out more medical centers and pressed for a stimulus bill to “reach localities and reach private and public hospitals.”

De Blasio didn’t relay what Trump or Pence said in response.

“I appreciated the conversation for sure and I will certainly be following up with the White House. But I’m waiting for a real answer of when exactly we’re going to get each kind of supply, each kind of equipment,” he said. “I heard good intentions — which I appreciate — but I want to see the real thing."

As of Sunday evening, there are 10,764 positive cases of COVID-19 and 99 fatalities. At least 1,800 people are hospitalized, with 450 of those individuals in intensive care.

De Blasio has repeatedly attacked Trump for not invoking the Defense Production Act to force private companies to make more supplies. He has called on the federal government to supply three million N-95 masks, 50 million surgical masks, 15,000 ventilators and 25 million sets of gowns, gloves and other protective equipment.

Public hospitals can only get through this week on their current stock of supplies, de Blasio said on CNN.

“If we don’t get ventilators this week we are going to lose lives we could have saved — I can’t be blunter than that,” the mayor said, appealing publicly for people to donate ventilators they may have.

De Blasio said the national supply chain has been “totally roiled“ by the spread of the virus, with bidding wars making it difficult to acquire supplies.

“I’ve been hearing stories the last few days from my emergency management team where they expected millions of masks to come in and have to tell me that somehow we got outbid somewhere else in the world and they’re going someplace else,” de Blasio said on CNN. “I mean the price gouging that’s happening here, and bluntly the opportunism by some, is disgusting.”

Back at home, de Blasio is resisting a push by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to consider closing streets to vehicles to give New Yorkers more room to practice social distancing. Cuomo on Sunday called on the city to give him a plan to reduce the number of people who are gathering in public places, after witnessing large congregations in public places.

“We are not going to the street shutdowns in the first instance — we’re sticking with the parks we have, the places where people go, because we know how to patrol those places and enforce,” he said. “If we decide to expand from there we’ll make that decision in the coming days.”

De Blasio also said it’s unlikely the city will be able to reopen schools on April 20, which had been the city’s goal.

“I do unfortunately believe the likelihood right now is we lose the whole school year, which is deeply, deeply unfortunate,” he said.