At least nine people have died after a fire broke out at a hospital in Romania's port city of Constanta.
All other patients had been evacuated from Constanta's Hospital for Infectious Diseases and the fire had been extinguished by mid-morning on Friday, Romania's emergency situations inspectorate said.
The health ministry said that 113 patients were in the medical unit of the hospital, 10 of whom were intensive care unit patients.
All the victims were in the intensive care unit of Constanta's Hospital for Infectious Diseases, said Constantin Amarandei, head of the city's emergency inspectorate. Only one patient from the ICU survived.
Romania, a European Union country of 19 million, has had two other deadly hospital fires within the past year, which has raised concerns about the country's ageing hospital infrastructure.
Last November, 10 people died after a fire tore through an intensive care unit for Covid-19 patients in the northern town of Piatra Neamt.
Another blaze in January engulfed a ward at Bucharest's Matei Bals hospital, killing five people.
President Klaus Iohannis said that the Romanian state "has failed in its fundamental mission to protect its citizens".
"I am horrified by the tragedy that took place this morning at the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Constanta," he said. "It is a terrible new drama that confirms the deficient infrastructure of the Romanian health system."
President Iohannis said that Romania's "outdated" health care system has been put under an "unimaginable pressure" by the pandemic.
Romania's hospitals are struggling due to a rapid surge of Covid-19 infections, which is stretching the country's hospitals to maximum capacity.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here