Russian health officials on Tuesday announced an investigation into the safety of ventilators at two hospitals, where fires in intensive care units (ICUs) for COVID-19 patients killed a total of six people over the past four days.
The deaths occurred as Russia’s growing coronavirus caseload is putting a strain on its vastly outdated healthcare infrastructure.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has boasted about Russia’s response to the outbreak, saying that a six-week lockdown helped “slow down the epidemic” and gave the government enough time to prepare the healthcare system for a worst-case scenario.
Photo: AP
“Every region is ready and has everything it needs to help people that might suffer from severe complications, and offer them specialized medical care, including intensive care,” Putin said on Monday, as he announced a gradual easing of restrictions and a reopening of businesses.
A fire on Tuesday morning at St George Hospital in St Petersburg killed five coronavirus patients who were on ventilators.
On Saturday, another fire broke out at the Spasokukotsky Hospital in Moscow and killed one patient.
Both hospitals have been recently repurposed for treating coronavirus patients and in both, faulty ventilators were reported to have caused the fire.
St George Hospital director Valery Strizheletsky said a ventilator in an ICU caught fire right in front of another doctor.
The brand-new, Russian-made breathing machine had been installed in the unit just 10 days before, local media reported.
Strizheletsky and hospital deputy director Igor Ivanov were unavailable for comment on Tuesday.
The ventilator that caught fire in Spasokukotsky Hospital was made at the same factory, the TASS state news agency reported, citing unnamed sources in law enforcement.
The factory in the Sverdlovsk region in the Russian Urals is owned by state-controlled Rostech Corp, run by longtime Putin ally Sergei Chemezov.
Russia’s state healthcare watchdog, Rossdravnadzor, said in a statement on Tuesday that it was looking into “the quality and the safety” of ventilators that are being used at both hospitals.
Doctors in hospitals outside cities such as Moscow and St Petersburg have regularly complained about shortages of ventilators or their poor quality.
“I have been in these situations myself several times: A patient is on a ventilator, then suddenly there’s an electricity spike and the ventilator turns off,” Tatyana Revva, an intensive care specialist at a hospital in Kalach-on-Don, a small town in southwestern Russia, told reporters.
“The ventilators we have, they’re 20 years old,” said Revva, who made national headlines after publicly complaining about shortages of protective gear and outdated equipment at her hospital.
Russian lawmaker Grigory Anikeyev last month donated 50 ventilators to a hospital in Vladimir, a small city east of Moscow, that turned out to be outdated by 15 years.
Two more hospitals in Vladimir reported receiving a total of 47 ventilators from the same expired batch.
However, the Russian government said that the country’s hospitals have enough ventilators to deal with the growing number of coronavirus patients.
Only “a small fraction” of Russia’s ventilator stockpile is being used, Putin said on Monday.
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