The US says it won't use Russia's ventilators after the same model was linked to 2 hospital fires

• Russia sent the United States a number of Aventa-M ventilators last month — the same model that may have caused two separate hospital fires in Russia in the past week.
• The ventilators delivered to the United States were not used, according to a spokesperson for the US Federal Emergency Management Agency.
• "Out of an abundance of caution, the states are returning the ventilators to FEMA," the spokesperson said.
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Last month, Russia sent the United States a shipment of Aventa-M ventilators, saying they could help with the nationwide shortage.

But now, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency says the ventilators won't be used after the model has been blamed for fatal fires in a St. Petersburg and Moscow hospitals.

The Aventa-M ventilators, delivered to New Jersey and New York, "have not been deployed to hospitals," FEMA spokesperson Janet Montesi said in a statement. "Out of an abundance of caution, the states are returning the ventilators to FEMA."

Russian health officials have also banned the Aventa-M ventilators in the aftermath of the fires.

On Tuesday, a fire broke out in the intensive care unit of a St. Petersburg hospital, killing five coronavirus patients. A similar fire was started in a Moscow hospital three days earlier, killing one coronavirus patient.

"The ventilators are working to their limits," Russia's Interfax news agency quoted a source as saying. "Preliminary data indicates that it was overloaded and caught fire."

Both blazes have been linked to the Aventa-M ventilator, which may have short-circuited. Investigations into the incidents are ongoing.

Reuters previously reported that the ventilators were manufactured by a Russian firm under US sanctions. The ventilators — along with other medical equipment — were delivered to the US by plane in April.

Russia has 252,245 confirmed coronavirus cases, according to Johns Hopkins University data — more than every country except the United States, which has almost 1.4 million such cases.