RUSSIA: Five COVID-19 Patients On Ventilator Killed In Hospital Fire
A fire at a St Petersburg hospital has killed five coronavirus patients in an intensive care unit.
The fire according to Russian news agencies was started by a short-circuit in a ventilator.
The blaze has now been contained and 150 people have been evacuated from the hospital, the country’s emergency ministry said. Five people have been confirmed dead but it is not clear how many people have been injured.
All of the patients who died had been on ventilators.
“The ventilators are working to their limits. Preliminary indications are that it was overloaded and caught fire, and that was the cause,” a source at St Petersburg emergencies department told the Interfax news agency.
Russia now has the third-highest number of confirmed infections worldwide. On Monday, it reported a record daily rise of 11,656 cases, bringing the official total to 221,344.
