India hospital fire kills 13 COVID-19 patients

On Apr 23, 2021

India hospital fire kills 13 COVID-19 patients on Friday, the incident comes amid a deadly second wave of infections in India.

The fire department official, Morrison Khavari, said there were 17 patients inside when a fire broke out in the ICU of Vijay Vallabh Hospital, out of which 13 died and four have been shifted to other facilities.

The latest fire broke out in the hospital in the outskirts of Mumbai, it has been put out and the cause is being investigated.

India recorded 332,730 coronavirus cases, the highest one-day tally anywhere in the world for the second day in a row. Daily deaths from COVID-19 rose by a record 2,263 in the previous 24 hours.

New Delhi continues to be among the worst hit, with hundreds of thousands of new infections and many new hospitalisations in the last few days.

India’s health care system has long suffered from underfunding and the new COVID-19 outbreak has seen critical shortages in oxygen, drugs and hospital beds, sparking desperate pleas for help.

Earlier this week, 22 COVID-19 patients died at another hospital in the same state when the oxygen supply to their ventilators was disrupted by a leak.

Four patients died when a blaze broke out in a private hospital in Maharashtra earlier this month.

Hospitals in the city have been posting daily desperate appeals over depleting oxygen supplies to the state and national government.

Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is set on Friday to hold at least three crisis meetings on oxygen supplies and the availability of critical medicines.

Kamila/Aljazeera