Romanians Outraged by COVID-19 Patients’ Deaths in Ventilator Failure

In the latest in a series of hospital tragedies that have outraged Romanians, three elderly female COVID-19 patients who were being treated in a container installed outside the Victor Babes hospital in Bucharest died on Monday evening due to a malfunction of the oxygen systems to which they were connected.

Romanian officials said the ventilators at the mobile intensive care unit stopped functioning after their pressure levels became abnormally high. Five people who survived the incident were moved to other facilities.

"The pressure should not pass 5.8 bars, but it rose to more than 6 today. How and why is being investigated," Romanian secretary of state and COVID-19 czar Raed Arafat told a late-night press conference.

The incident follows several others in healthcare facilities. In November last year, ten COVID-19 patients died in a blaze caused by an electrical problem at an intensive care unit in north-eastern Romania, and in January, five patients died in another fire, this time at Bucharest's Matei Bals hospital for infectious diseases.

The deaths at Victor Babes hospital in Bucharest have increased the pressure on embattled Health Minister Vlad Voiculescu.

Voiculescu had already come under severe criticism after a video published at the weekend showed non-COVID-19 patients carrying their belongings out of a Bucharest hospital at night to make room for patients infected with the virus.

Voiculescu was also accused of lacking empathy and professionalism last week when he repeatedly denied the existence of a ministerial order, signed by a predecessor, establishing that the bodies of COVID-19 patients who had autopsied should be put in coffins naked and wrapped in a bag.

The health minister eventually apologised and...