Read more about Guj: 18 including 16 Covid patients killed in hospital fire in Bharuch on Business Standard. The state government said a judicial inquiry will be conducted
At least eighteen persons including 16 COVID-19 patients died in a fire at a hospital at Bharuch in Gujarat in the early hours of Saturday, officials said. The state government said a judicial inquiry will be conducted into the fire that destroyed the Intensive Care Unit of Patel Welfare Hospital, run by a charitable trust. « Sixteen patients and two nursing staff were either charred to death or died due to suffocation inside a COVID-19 unit, » Superintendent of Police Rajendrasinh Chudasama said. As many as 50 patients were undergoing treatment at the COVID-19 facility on the ground floor when fire broke out in the ICU around 1 am, probably because of short circuit, said a hospital official. The fire was doused within an hour. Local people and the kin of patients helped in the rescue operation during which dozens of patients were shifted to other facilities by ambulance. Some were brought out of the building on wheelchairs or on make-shift stretchers of cloth.
