Thirteen Covid-19 patients died this Friday morning in a fire in a hospital in the suburbs of Bombay in India, said a firefighter official.
With nearly 4 million new infections since the beginning of April, the country is facing an exponential increase in cases, in particular attributed to a "double mutation" of the virus and to mass events, such as the Hindu religious festival Khumb Mela.
Several incidents
He also faces a shortage of oxygen, medicine and hospital beds. The fire, now extinguished, broke out at around 3 a.m. (9:30 p.m. GMT Thursday) and its causes are being investigated, a firefighter official said. "Seventeen patients were in the intensive care unit at Vijay Vallabh Hospital when a fire broke out, 13 died and four others were transferred to other facilities," said Morrison Khavari, an official. firefighters. Two days earlier, 22 patients with Covid-19 died at another hospital in the same state of Maharashtra due to an oxygen supply cut-off to ventilators for half an hour.
Four patients were also killed in early April in a fire at a private clinic in Maharashtra, while in March a fire in a hospital killed eleven people in Bombay.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is due to participate in at least three crisis meetings on Friday devoted in particular to the supply of oxygen and the availability of essential drugs.
The capital New Delhi continues to be among the hardest hit, with hundreds of thousands of new infections and a slew of new hospitalizations in recent days.
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