Russian authorities are investigating the safety of ventilators, some of which have been sent to the US, after a fire broke out in a St Petersburg hospital, leaving at least five people dead.
The blaze erupted at St George's City Hospital after a ventilator in the intensive care ward treating patients with COVID-19 burst into flames on Tuesday morning, a source told the TASS news agency.
A similar fire — caused by the same model of ventilator, according to a law enforcement source speaking to TASS — killed one person in a hospital in Moscow on Saturday.
Russia's healthcare watchdog has said it would check the quality and safety of the ventilators in the two hospitals, and St George's City Hospital said it would stop using the model in question until the investigation is complete.
The model in question, the Aventa-M, was among those sent to the United States from Russia at the start of April to help it cope with the coronavirus pandemic, and is made by a firm that is under US sanctions.
US firms and nationals have been barred from doing business with KRET since July 2014.
The Ural Instrument Engineering Plant (UPZ) in Chelyabinsk, 1,500km east of Moscow, confirmed that the Aventa-M is one of its products and had been supplied to St George's hospital.
"We have no official data about which devices were installed in the zone of the (St Petersburg) fire," a spokeswoman added.
Questions over quality of ventilators
Russia is relatively well stocked with ventilators, and has increased domestic production since the coronavirus outbreak.
Data experts and some medics say many machines in use outside Russia's big cities are old but TASS said the ventilator in St Petersburg was new and had been installed this month.
Radio-Electronic Technologies Concern (KRET), which controls manufacturer UPZ, said its ventilators had passed all the necessary tests and had been used by medical facilities in Russia since 2012 without any safety concerns.
"We're looking at different scenarios: the state of the (electricity) network, the medical institutions' engineering infrastructure, the medical equipment, and compliance with fire safety rules," it said in a statement.
"We call on the media and other interested parties not to rush to conclusions and wait for the results of official checks."
On Monday a third fire broke out at a private hospice near Moscow which killed nine elderly people outright.
The hospice's owner was detained by police and investigators believe the fire was caused by faulty electrical wiring.
Russia has reported over 230,000 cases of coronavirus, the second highest number of cases in the world as of Tuesday according to the Johns Hopkins University, and at least 2,116 deaths.
ABC/Reuters
