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India hospital fire tolls 18

At least 16 corona patients and two nurses died Saturday in the latest in a series of hospital fires in India.

There were around 50 other patients at the four-storey hospital in Bharuch in the western state of Gujarat when the blaze began at 1:00 am local time. It has since been put out.

The death toll stood at 18, local police official Rajendrasinh Chudasama told AFP, “including 16 patients and two nurses.”

“Primary investigation revealed that the fire started due to a short-circuit in the ICU of the hospital,” he said.

On April 23 a fire on the outskirts of Mumbai killed 13 Covid-19 patients, a few days after another blaze left 22 people dead at another clinic, also in Maharashtra state.

India’s health care system has long suffered from underfunding, and the new virus outbreak has seen critical shortages in oxygen, drugs and hospital beds, with patients dying outside hospitals in some areas.

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