At least four patients have died after a fire broke out at a hospital in the Romanian capital Bucharest.
The blaze tore through the ground floor of the Matei Bals hospital where coronavirus patients were being treated in the early hours of Friday.
The infectious disease centre hosted Romania’s first Covid vaccination in December, with the first dose going to 26-year-old nurse Mihaela Anghel.
Friday’s incident forced the evacuation of a building that houses 100 people.
An unspecified number of people were injured before firefighters extinguished the flames, Romanian authorities said.
Emergency services commander Orlando Schiopu, who was at the scene said: “We found open flame at the ground floor of the building. ... There was a lot of smoke, and there was a chance the fire would spread to the second floor.”
Read Arafat, the hospital’s emergency department chief, confirmed that the four victims were all hospital patients.
Of them, three were already dead when they were found. Rescuers tried to resuscitate the fourth victim but were unable to, he added.
It is not yet clear what caused the blaze.
The Balkan nation, of some 19 million people, has reported more than 700,000 cases of the virus and 18,000 deaths.
