A Romanian hospital became the setting of a tragic event on Friday, October 1, after a blaze ripped though the facility’s intensive care unit, killing at least seven COVID-19 patients.

It was the third deadly hospital blaze in the country in less than a year, and at least two dozen people have died in those fires. An inspection in February at the hospital where the latest fire occurred, in the Black Sea port city of Constanta, had found what one official described as “malfunctions.”

The cause of the fire was under investigation, and officials said that oxygen supplies had been turned off, raising the possibility that the tanks may have played a role in the blaze. Oxygen tanks being used to treat patients with severe COVID-19 have been blamed for deadly fires at other coronavirus clinics around the world, most recently killing 14 people in North Macedonia.

President Klaus Iohannis called Friday’s fire “a terrible new drama that confirms the deficient infrastructure of the Romanian health system,” which he characterized as “an outdated system, long strained and put under unimaginable pressure by the fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Read the full article on The New York Times.