Around nine people including patients killed in Romanian hospital fire

According to local authorities, a fire in a Romanian hospital has killed at least nine people, marking the third fatal incident at the country's health facilities in less than a year.

Firefighters extinguished the blaze at a hospital in the southeastern port city of Constanta shortly before 11 a.m. local time (08:00 GMT) after bringing additional teams from nearby counties. The cause of the fire is not yet known.

Video footage shows patients jumping out of windows from the lower levels of the hospital and firefighters carrying people.

Interim Health Minister Cseke Attila said 113 patients were in the hospital at the fire, including 10 in the intensive care unit.

Reuters reports that emergency teams have installed a mobile triage unit near the site while dozens of patients have been evacuated and transferred to other hospitals.

Romania, a European Union country of 19 million, has experienced two other fatal hospital fires in the last 12 months, raising concerns about its health facilities.

In January, a fire killed five patients at a COVID-19 hospital in the capital, Bucharest. Ten people died in a fire in an intensive care unit at the northeastern Piatra Neamt County Hospital two months ago.

Even before the pandemic, Romania had put the health care system under pressure, thought to be due to alleged corruption, inefficiency and politicized management.

The country has one of the least developed healthcare infrastructures of the European Union.

Over the last three decades, the state has built a hospital, spending at least on health insurance in the EU, and thousands of doctors and nurses have emigrated.

Meanwhile, authorities are battling a record number of COVID-19 infections across the country. The number of new cases in Romania reached 12,032 on Thursday, a new high. Intensive care units throughout the country have run out of space.

Romania has the second-lowest COVID-19 vaccination rate in the 27-nation EU.