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A fire in a St. Petersburg hospital killed five coronavirus patients in an intensive care unit.
Apparently, the fire was caused by a short circuit in a fan, Russian news agencies reported.
The fire has already been contained and 150 people have been evacuated from the hospital, the country’s emergency ministry said. It is unclear how many people have been injured.
All the patients who died had been on ventilators.
“The fans are working to their limits. Preliminary indications indicate that it was overloaded and caught fire, and that was the cause,” a source from the St. Petersburg emergency department told the Interfax news agency.
The news comes as the country begins to ease the blockade restrictions. Construction, agriculture and factory workers are returning to work.
Russia now has the third highest number of confirmed infections worldwide. On Monday, it reported a record daily increase of 11,656 cases, bringing the official total to 221,344.
That means Russia now has more confirmed cases than Italy and the UK.
