Another tragedy, 14 Covid-19 die in hospital blaze in Maharashtra's Palghar district

Virar (Maha), April 23

Fourteen Covid-19 patients died after a fire broke out at the intensive care unit of a private hospital in Palghar district of Maharashtra on Friday, the police said. While 13 were charred to death in the ICU, one patient died while being shifted to another hospital, an official said.

There were 83 patients in the hospital, 17 of them in the ICU, when the fire broke out on the second floor of the four-storeyed Vijay Vallabh Hospital shortly after 3 am. Relatives of the victims claimed the hospital employees were asleep when the blaze broke out and there was nobody to help the patients at the ICU. The tragedy comes two days after 24 Covid patients either on ventilator or oxygen support were suffocated to death when the oxygen supply stopped suddenly due to a malfunction in the main storage at a civic hospital in Nashik. A fire broke out in Mumbai’s Dreams Mall, which housed a Covid-designated hospital, in the intervening night of March 25-26. The fire, that raged for over 40 hours, claimed nine lives, including those of patients on ventilator support. — PTI