MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – A shocking story about brand new ventilators found tossed aside at a Miami-Dade County landfill has a new update.
Local 10 has been investigating this from the start, trying to get answers from the company that helped bring the devices into the United States.
The sight of millions of dollars-worth of brand-new medical ventilators that were dumped as trash, instead of saving lives, has brought outrage.
Some answers were provided Monday from the customs importer contracted to trash Chinese-made ventilators. They were brought into the U.S. last spring during the national scramble for ventilators to save the most serious COVID-19 patients.
Alpha Brokers’ Sergio Lozano agreed to speak in general terms in order to maintain the privacy of his client.
“I’m the one who clears the documents past Customs, prepares them and submits them to the government agencies,” Lozano said.
The ACM812A ventilators, manufactured by a Beijing-based defense contractor Aerospace Changfeng LTD., were not on the FDA’s authorized list, likely admitted in on conditional release.
Meaning - that product is allowed to enter the country, but it’s not allowed to enter commerce.
Why? Because FDA has the right to review it.
If they review it and find that product should not be in the country, they then issue a notice of detention, ending with a notice of refusal.
Weeding through months of refusal reports, Local 10 News found four shipments of Aerospace Changfeng ventilators refused last Oct. 29.
The reason? Misbranding.
The millions in unapproved ventilators legally had to be exported or destroyed.
The dumping receipt shows the cost was $368.72.
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