CUTTACK, Sep 21: In yet another incident of fire breaking out in a designated COVID-19 hospital, at least 127 patients had a narrow escape in Odisha’s Cuttack city on Monday morning.
Fire officials said a short circuit in the ICU on the ground floor of Sadguru Covid hospital in Jagatpur area of Cuttack triggered a fire this morning. As smoke enveloped the ICU and other rooms and some patients became unconscious, the hospital staff members started evacuating the patients.
According to Chief fire officer Sukanta Sethy, there was no casualty and all the patients had been shifted to another Covid hospital by ambulances and buses.
“Though the exact cause of fire is yet to be ascertained, it seems an electrical short circuit in the ICU was the trigger. Two fire tenders have brought the fire under control,” he said. The Odisha health minister has ordered an investigation into the fire incident.
The Sadguru Covid hospital started operating a month ago with the provision of 150 general beds and 24 ICU beds. The fire is likely to make the availability of beds for Covid patients difficult in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack where ICU beds are almost exhausted due to a spike in Covid cases. On Monday, 4,242 new cases were recorded in the state.
On August 6, at least eight Covid patients, including 3 women, in the ICU ward of a Covid hospital in Ahmedabad had died after a major fire broke out and three days later ten people were killed in a major fire caused by a short circuit at a hotel which was being used as a coronavirus facility in Vijayawada city of Andhra Pradesh.
Fire safety in Odisha hospital has been a source of a major concern for the state government after a blaze in a leading private hospital in Bhubaneswar in October 2016 killed 26 people and injured over 100 people.
(Manas Dasgupta)