Five Covid-19 Patients on Ventilators Die in St. Petersburg Fire

(Bloomberg) --

Five Covid-19 patients in intensive care died Tuesday in a fire at a hospital in Russia’s second-largest city, according to local media reports, as the country’s medical system strains under the weight of the epidemic.

The fire, which started in the sixth floor of the hospital in an area set up to treat Covid-19 patients, may have been caused by a ventilator short circuit, the Interfax news service reported, citing a person it didn’t identify. Some 150 people were evacuated from the building, it said.

The fire was extinguished, the local emergencies ministry reported later. It was the second deadly blaze at a Russian hospital treating coronavirus patients in the last week, after one patient died at a Moscow clinic fire on May 9.

Russia passed Spain Tuesday for the second-most coronavirus cases in the world and added 10,899 new diagnoses over the last day, for a total of 232,243. It has among the lowest reported death rates from the disease, with 2,116 fatalities so far.

Russian health officials say that the system is coping with the influx of coronavirus patients. On Monday, President Vladimir Putin said Russia had increased the number of beds available to treat the disease from 29,000 to 130,000, as he announced an end to nationwide stay-at-home orders introduced in late March.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.