Nine patients have tragically died after a fire broke out in a hospital’s intensive care unit treating people with coronavirus.
According to officials, the blaze broke out after a high-pressure oxygen cylinder exploded in Sanko University Hospital unit in southern Turkey.
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca confirmed that nine people passed away because of the incident.
The governor’s office said that 19 patients were in the ICU when the oxygen cylinder exploded.
The victims were aged between 56 and 85, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
Other patients who were undergoing intensive care treatment were moved to other facilities, according to a hospital statement.
“Authorities have taken the necessary measures,” the statement added while offering condolences to the victims’ families.
The blaze was immediately brought under control after it broke out.
Intensive care units across the country currently have a 74 percent bed occupancy rate because of the pandemic but medical associations say hospitals are overrun with coronavirus patients.
Turkey’s Health Ministry recently reported 26,410 new Covid-19 cases, bringing the total to 1.98 million.
Last month, a hospital fire in Romania took the lives of 10 patients receiving treatment for coronavirus. Many reports suggest that a medical appliance caught fire and ignited an oxygen cylinder.
In October, 150 patients at a makeshift hospital in Chelyabinsk, Russia had to be transferred when an explosion in an ‘oxygen booth’ caused a blaze.
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