Four patients were killed and 102 others were evacuated as massive fire broke out on Friday, in one of the buildings of the Matei Bals hospital in Romania.
The fire has been extinguished and prosecutors are investigating its cause.
“None of the (evacuated) patients have burns, from the information we currently have,” Deputy Interior Minister in charge of emergency situations Raed Arafat told reporters.
Nearly 7,700 COVID-19 patients were in hospitals across Romania, including 989 in intensive care units.
“It is obvious there is a problem,” Health Minister Vlad Voiculescu told private television station Antena 3.
“We are talking about the most-funded institute in the country. It is also the hospital which has treated ... a lot of patients, it was used to capacity,” Voiculescu added.
The hospital building was built in 1953 and had been completely renovated, according to its manager’s statement.
Matei Bals is believed to be one of the largest and most used COVID-19 hospitals in the country.
The evacuated patients had medium to serious COVID-19 infections and most were using oxygen, the hospital’s manager said.
About 44 of them have been sent to other COVID-19 hospitals across Bucharest, and the remaining patients were re-located to other buildings at Matei Bals.
This is considered the second deadly hospital fire in the European Union state in under three months.
In November, a fire broke out at the intensive care unit of the Piatra Neamt county hospital, killing ten people.
Even before the pandemic, Romania’s health care system had been under pressure, dogged by corruption, inefficiencies and politicized management, as the country has one of the EU’s least developed healthcare infrastructures.
The country has reported 721,513 coronavirus cases and 18,105 deaths.
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