An overloaded ventilator burst into flames and killed five novel coronavirus patients in a Russian hospital on Tuesday, according to news agencies in the country. The patients were reportedly in an intensive-care unit inside a St. Petersburg hospital. The Kremlin confirmed the death of ICU patients, but didn’t say how many people had been killed or how the fire started. “Ventilators are at their limit. According to preliminary data, there was an overload and the machine ignited, which caused the fire,” an unnamed source told the Interfax news agency. The emergency ministry confirmed around 150 people had been evacuated from the hospital. The number of new confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Russia spiked by 11,656 on Monday, bringing the official total to more than 220,000.
