diff --git a/app/vminsert/netstorage/netstorage.go b/app/vminsert/netstorage/netstorage.go
index 4b2584a637..996e275d65 100644
--- a/app/vminsert/netstorage/netstorage.go
+++ b/app/vminsert/netstorage/netstorage.go
@@ -325,10 +325,9 @@ var cannotCloseStorageNodeConnLogger = logger.WithThrottler("cannotCloseStorageN
 var cannotSendBufsLogger = logger.WithThrottler("cannotSendBufRows", 5*time.Second)
 
 func sendToConn(bc *handshake.BufferedConn, buf []byte) error {
-	if len(buf) == 0 {
-		// Nothing to send
-		return nil
-	}
+	// if len(buf) == 0, it must be sent to the vmstorage too in order to check for vmstorage health
+	// See checkReadOnlyMode() and https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/4870
+
 	timeoutSeconds := len(buf) / 3e5
 	if timeoutSeconds < 60 {
 		timeoutSeconds = 60
diff --git a/docs/CHANGELOG.md b/docs/CHANGELOG.md
index f38f7b0626..304ed980de 100644
--- a/docs/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/docs/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -42,7 +42,8 @@ The following `tip` changes can be tested by building VictoriaMetrics components
 * BUGFIX: [vmagent](https://docs.victoriametrics.com/vmagent.html): consistently set timeout for scraping with enabled or disabled [stream parsing mode](https://docs.victoriametrics.com/vmagent.html#stream-parsing-mode). See [this issue](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/4847).
 * BUGFIX: [Official Grafana dashboards for VictoriaMetrics](https://grafana.com/orgs/victoriametrics): fix display of ingested rows rate for `Samples ingested/s` and `Samples rate` panels for vmagent's dasbhoard. Previously, not all ingested protocols were accounted in these panels. An extra panel `Rows rate` was added to `Ingestion` section to display the split for rows ingested rate by protocol.
 * BUGFIX: [vmalert](https://docs.victoriametrics.com/vmalert.html): correctly re-use HTTP request object on `EOF` retries when querying the configured datasource. Previously, there was a small chance that query retry wouldn't succeed.
-* BUGFIX: vmselect: correctly handle requests with `/select/multitenant` prefix. Such requests must be rejected since vmselect does not support multitenancy endpoint. Previously, such requests were causing panic. See [this issue](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/4910).
+* BUGFIX: [vmselect](https://docs.victoriametrics.com/Cluster-VictoriaMetrics.html): correctly handle requests with `/select/multitenant` prefix. Such requests must be rejected since vmselect does not support multitenancy endpoint. Previously, such requests were causing panic. See [this issue](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/4910).
+* BUGFIX: [vminsert](https://docs.victoriametrics.com/Cluster-VictoriaMetrics.html): properly check for [read-only state](https://docs.victoriametrics.com/Cluster-VictoriaMetrics.html#readonly-mode) at `vmstorage`. Previously it wasn't properly checked, which could lead to increased resource usage and data ingestion slowdown when some of `vmstorage` nodes are in read-only mode. See [this issue](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/4870).
 
 ## [v1.93.1](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/releases/tag/v1.93.1)