The Trump administration has thrown out 45 ventilators that Russia sent the U.S. last spring, the Federal Emergency Management Agency confirmed in a statement Monday.

The ventilators were delivered as part of a medical aid flight sent last spring by Russian President Vladimir Putin to President Donald Trump.

"He offered a lot of medical, high quality stuff that I accepted and that may save a lot of lives. I'll take it every day," Trump said at the time of the flight, dismissing questions about whether it was Russian propaganda.

ABC was first to report last spring that the U.S. was billed some $660K for the Russian aid supplies, which included thousands of pieces of equipment not typically used in hospitals, like chemical warfare-style gas masks and household cleaning gloves.

When asked whether the U.S. would get its money back, a FEMA spokeswoman suggested that money never changed hands because the supplies are now regarded as a "donation."

"Therefore, no payment was required by the U.S. for the donated goods," she said.

New York and New Jersey had received the ventilators but quickly returned them to the federal stockpile without ever having used them, following reports that five coronavirus patients in St. Petersburg were killed in fires linked to overloaded ventilators.

"The donated ventilators in question were disposed of following strict hazardous waste disposal regulatory guidelines," the FEMA spokeswoman said.

ABC News' Anne Flaherty contributed to this report.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows signaled to reporters that it is premature at this point to answer specific questions from state governors about vaccine distribution since there is no vaccine in the final stages.

Over the weekend, the National Governors Association sent a letter to President Donald Trump with several questions about a future vaccine rollout, including questions about funding, supply chain and communication.

"At the appropriate time we’ll be working with them," Meadows said of the governors. "But until we have a vaccine that’s actually in final stages of approval, that distribution and discussions of that would be premature."

In an effort to stem rising coronavirus cases, Ireland will enter a six-week national lockdown starting Wednesday, according to the Irish government.

Ireland's lockdown, which mandates that nonessential employees work from home, residents stay within a 5-kilometer radius of their homes, and nonessential businesses close, is among the strictest in Europe.

Unlike Ireland's strict lockdown in the spring, however, schools will remain open for now.

California will only distribute COVID-19 vaccines after they've been independently approved by a state board, Gov. Gavin Newsom said during a Monday news conference.

The board will be made up of 11 experts from California universities and is meant to dispel vaccine hesitancy following the intense politicization already surrounding the potential vaccine.

Newsom also urged patience. "Don't expect that you'll go down to a local pharmacy anytime in this calendar year and get a vaccination," he said.

Instead, most Californians can expect to be vaccinated in 2021, according to the governor.

There were 48,210 new cases of COVID-19 identified in the United States on Sunday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

The latest daily tally is down by nearly 10,000 from the previous day and also falls under the country’s record set on July 16, when there were 77,255 new cases in a 24-hour-reporting period.

An additional 389 coronavirus-related fatalities were also recorded Sunday, almost half the previous day's death toll and down from a peak of 2,666 new fatalities reported on April 17.

A total of 8,154,935 people in the United States have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 217,700 of them have died, according to Johns Hopkins. The cases include people from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C. and other U.S. territories as well as repatriated citizens.

By May 20, all U.S. states had begun lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The day-to-day increase in the country's cases then hovered around 20,000 for a couple of weeks before shooting back up and crossing 70,000 for the first time in mid-July. The daily tally of new cases has gradually come down since then but has started to climb again in recent weeks.

The number of new COVID-19 cases recorded in the United States continued to increase by double digits in week-over-week comparisons, while the number of new deaths from the disease ticked upward slightly, according to an internal memo from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that was obtained by ABC News on Friday night.