A fire in a hospital ward in southern Iraq for patients with COVID-19 killed at least 64 people and injured 50, some in critical condition, Iraqi health officials said today in a new assessment.
“The death toll in the fire at the iman Hussein hospital has risen to 64 and 50 people were injured,” the Iraqi news agency INA reported.
The fire at Al Hussein University Hospital in Nasiriyah city was caused by an explosion of an oxygen tank, according to a provincial health worker, although there are also reports indicating a short circuit.
The Ministry of Health did not comment on the causes of the fire.
The new wing of the hospital, which opened three months ago, had 70 beds, according to two doctors.
This is the second time this year that a massive fire has killed patients infected with the new coronavirus in an Iraqi hospital. At least 82 people died in April at Ibn al-Khatib hospital in Baghdad when an oxygen cylinder exploded, which set off a fire.
Iraq is facing a new wave of pandemic, with cases hitting a record 9,000 new cases per day last week.
According to the latest estimate by Agence France-Presse, the covid-19 pandemic has caused at least 4,028,446 deaths worldwide as a result of more than 186.3 million cases of the novel coronavirus.
The respiratory illness is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, discovered at the end of 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China, and currently variants identified in countries such as the UK, India, South Africa, Brazil and Peru.
