Elon Musk in Twitter spat with California governor, CNN over ventilators claim

UPDATE: California Gov. Gavin Newsom late Thursday said he was not aware that the devices Musk had donated had made it to several hospitals and added, "I look forward to learning more about where they went and I’m grateful for his support.”

Previous story appears below:

For a guy running an electric vehicle company currently valued north of $130 billion, Elon Musk has been incredibly busy on Twitter in the last 24 hours. There, in-between a flurry of posts about Autopilot updates, SpaceX and particle physics, the Tesla CEO found time to weigh in on the wisdom of intubation for coronavirus patients and respond to reports that no hospitals in California have received any of the ventilators he promised to donate.

Musk said more than three weeks ago on Twitter that he had bought more than 1,000 FDA-approved ventilators and was shipping them to Los Angeles. His promise was echoed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who later said the units had arrived in L.A. and called it “a heroic effort.”

Newsom’s office now says Musk was supposed to deliver them directly to hospitals, but none have received any.

“The Administration is communicating every day with hospitals across the state about their ventilator supply and to date we have not heard of any hospital system that has received a ventilator directly from Tesla or Musk,” a spokesperson for the governor’s Office of Emergency Services told CNN. The news was first reported by the Sacramento Bee.