A fire broke out in a hospital treating coronavirus patients Thursday night in Zaporizhia, eastern Ukraine, killing three patients and a young doctor and wounding two, according to Ukrainian news portals.
Referring to a statement from the Prosecutor of the UNIAN news agency, Irina Vinegektova, she wrote that the victims – a 91-year-old woman, a 76-year-old woman, and a 64-year-old woman – were all on a ventilator. The fourth victim was a 26-year-old anesthesiologist. According to the preliminary results of the studies, they lost their lives in smoke poisoning.
The Public Prosecutor said that eight other patients who were in grave danger from the outbreak of the fire were rescued unharmed. Another anesthesiologist and a nurse were injured. They were taken to hospital with burns and smoke poisoning.
County Prosecutor’s Office initiated criminal proceedings for violating fire safety requirements, resulting in fatal neglect.
The fire broke out on the first floor of the five-story building of the county hospital, which is treating infected patients, and spread over an area of 50 square feet. Outgoing firefighters put out the flames in no time.
According to the Ukrainian newspaper Pravda, a total of 29 people were in the building when the fire broke out. Other levels have not been evacuated from patients because they are not at risk. The news portal also reported that patients on a ventilator were evacuated from the burnt floor by taking stones.
Meanwhile, the spread of Coronavirus infection in Ukraine continued to accelerate by Thursday, as more than five thousand new patients were registered in one day, about 1,800 more than the previous day.
According to the officially released data, the number of identified injured increased by 1,282,246, with 5,082 new cases in the last day, and the number of deaths increased by 140 victims to 23,229. So far, 1,055,406 people have been cured, nearly ten thousand of them the day before, reducing the number of active patients by about 5,000 to 153,611.
Most of the new patients, 429, were registered this time in Khmelnytskyi Oblast in the western part of the country, and the majority, 22, died in Donetsk Oblast, eastern Ukraine.
Prime Minister Denis Smehall said in an announcement that 117,000 doses of the Pfizer-Bio vaccine will arrive in Ukraine “in the coming weeks” through the international COVAX initiative and that the most vulnerable will be vaccinated in February. However, the prime minister did not specify a precise date for the vaccinations to start, the UNN News Portal reported in his report. In the first round, in Ukraine, it is planned to vaccinate health workers as well as elderly and chronic patients. (MTI)
