Moscow and several other regions have been on lockdown since late March to stem the spread of the coronavirus, which has so far infected nearly 200,000 people and caused more than 1,800 deaths in Russia.
Representational image (Photo: IStock)
At least one person was dead after a fire broke out on Saturday at a Moscow hospital treating patients infected with the new coronavirus and forced the evacuation of about 200 others, according to the authorities.
The fire at the facility in the northern part of the city has been extinguished, the media report said.
No cause was determined for the fire, which affected a ward of the hospital that had been repurposed for treating victims of the new coronavirus.
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The emergency ministry told the RIA news agency that the blaze erupted in a patient’s room, without providing further details. The fire has since been put out, the authorities further added.
Taking to Twitter, Sergei Sobyanin, the mayor of Moscow said that all patients had been evacuated and would be transferred to other hospitals.
Moscow and several other regions have been on lockdown since late March to stem the spread of the coronavirus, which has so far infected nearly 200,000 people and caused more than 1,800 deaths in Russia.
In 2015, a fire at a psychiatric hospital in southern Russia that left 21 people dead.
In 2009, 156 people were killed in a nightclub fire in the city of Perm, 1,200 kilometres (700 miles) east of Moscow in one of the deadliest accidents in Russia’s modern history.
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