Fire at Romanian Covid Hospital Kills at Least Seven People
Fire at Romanian Covid Hospital Kills at Least Four People
(Bloomberg) -- A fire at a hospital treating Covid-19 patients in the Romanian city of Constanta killed at least seven people, highlighting the dilapidated condition of the eastern European country’s health-care system as the pandemic worsens.
The cause of the blaze, the third at a Romanian facility since the coronavirus first appeared last year, has yet to be determined. The management of the hospital had received warnings in the past over the unit’s fire safety, Interior Minister Lucian Bode said Friday. The deaths occurred on the intensive-care ward.
“It’s a new terrible drama that confirms the poor state of our health-care infrastructure, an outdated system that’s under heavy pressure from the fourth wave of the pandemic,” President Klaus Iohannis said in a statement. “Unfortunately today, the Romanian state has failed in its fundamental mission to protect its citizens.”
Romanian hospitals are seeing an influx of patients as the delta variant spreads in one of the European Union’s least-vaccinated countries. The Black Sea state has reported over 10,000 new cases per day over the past week and the authorities are struggling to boost the number of intensive-care beds.
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