Romania fire in a COVID-19 hospital kills four

At least four people have been killed in a massive fire at a hospital in Bucharest which was being used as a primary place to treat COVID-19 patients, just three months after a different hospital fire killed ten people cold of the Romanian capital.

The fire burst out at the Matei Bals Hospital in Bucharest, one of the city's largest, early on Friday. The hospital have the biggest ward treating coronavirus patients and sudden fire have left millions astonished because of the incident.

"Three patients were pronounced dead and a fourth died later," said Secretary of State at the Ministry of the Interior, Raed Arafat, figuring that they were victims with Covid-19.

"About 120 patients who were in the same ward were evacuated," ISU spokesperson Bogdan Toma told AFP.

In November the hospital, also known as the National Insititute of Infectious Diseases, made news not just in Romania but across the region after images were disseminated online showing overcrowded wards and patients having to be treated in corridors due to an influx of COVID-19 cases.

On November 14, 10 people were killed at a hospital operating COVID-19 patients in the northern city of Piatra Neamt.

After the accident, police announced checks in intense care units across the country.

Speaking at the time, Marius Filip, director of the Romanian health right, told AFP that less than a third of Romania's 670 hospitals have fire-safety certification.

The fires - and the COVID-19 pandemic - have taken Romania's faltering healthcare system into stark focus in the five years after an October fire at a Bucharest nightclub left 64 people dead.

Over seven hundred thousand people in Romania have tested positive for the coronavirus while more than eighteen thousand have lost their lives to the contagious disease.

On average the country is receiving more than two thousand cases of coronavirus. As per stastics 600,000 have also recovered from the virus in Romania.