Gujarat: Another fire at SSG Hospital in Vadodara, no casualty reported

A fire broke out at the

state-run SSG Hospital treating COVID-19 patients in Gujarat's Vadodara city, the second such incident at the hospital in a week, officials said on Sunday.

The minor blaze erupted in the hospital late Saturday night following a spark in the electric room of the neurosurgery ward, but it was soon doused with a fire extinguisher by alert staff members, they said.

There was no casualty, they added.

No fire department personnel was called, a fire brigade official said.

The incident took place on the ground floor of the building, which has an ICU ward having several patients on the first floor and a laboratory for testing samples for coronavirus, a hospital official said.

"It was a minor fire. A fuse blew up due to an electric spark, but the fire was soon brought under control," SSG Hospital's medical superintendent Ranjan Aiyer said.

"We controlled the blaze using a fire extinguisher. Had the fire not been controlled, the situation could have been worse as many serious patients are admitted in the ICU ward on the first floor," another hospital official said.

Earlier, a fire broke out in the hospital in Tuesday following which 35 patients were shifted from two affected wards. No one was injured in that incident.

The fire had broken out due to a short-circuit in a ventilator inside the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) ward where critical coronavirus patients were being treated, an official earlier said.