LDN - Health and Fitness

U.S. to send Russia 200 ventilators as Russian coronavirus cases near 300,000

[May 19, 2020] By Tom Balmforth and Maria Kiselyova

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The United States said on Tuesday it would this week start delivering 200 medical ventilators to Russia, which has the world's second highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases.

Russia reported 9,263 new infections on Tuesday, pushing its nationwide total to 299,941, and 115 more deaths, taking the total death toll to 2,837. Only the United States has reported more coronavirus cases.

The new cases were for a fourth successive day below 10,000. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said on Monday Russia had halted the growth in infections and that there were other positive signs.

Mishustin, one of four government ministers to catch the coronavirus, has been discharged from a clinic and is now working normally, the Interfax news agency quoted his spokesman as saying on Tuesday.

The U.S. embassy in Moscow said Russian President Vladimir Putin had requested assistance from the United States and that U.S. President Donald Trump had offered to send 200 U.S.-made ventilators.

The presidents spoke by telephone on May 7.

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A first batch of 50 ventilators should be ready for shipment on Wednesday, while the remaining 150 will be ready shortly after, the embassy said in a statement.

Russia sent a batch of its own ventilators to the United States in early April, but U.S. officials say they were not needed in the end.

The Russian ventilator in question, the Aventa-M, came into the spotlight last week after it was reported to have caused fires in hospital in Moscow and St Petersburg.

That prompted Russia to suspend the use of Aventa-M ventilators produced after April 1.

(Additional reporting by Gleb Stolyarov and Anastasia Teterevleva; Editing by Timothy Heritage)

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