PHOTO The situation is serious! Migrants at the border threw stones at the police: One soldier lost his life – Topky.sk

Three patients, men aged 66, 70 and 81, all had COVID-19 disease and lost their lives on the fourth floor of a hospital in Sliven, the head of the local emergency services, Vladimir Demirev, told Bulgarian television.

Six other patients in neighboring wards had to be evacuated. The accident happened on the day of the third parliamentary elections in this Member State of the European Union and the country is experiencing the most tragic wave of coronavirus infection so far.

“The most likely cause of the fire was one patient’s cigarette,” The Bulgarian Ministry of Health wrote in a statement. Hospitals in Bulgaria, often dilapidated, are now overcrowded with people sick with covid. Just over 23 percent of Bulgarians out of a total population of 6.9 million are fully vaccinated against coronavirus. Bulgaria has the lowest vaccinated rates in the EU.

Previous elections in April and July have resulted in fragmented parliaments, where political parties have failed to form a coalition, and new early elections are not expected to yield a stable government either. The current interim government has not imposed stricter anti-pandemic restrictions, thus preventing a rapidly worsening new wave of infections and deaths in covid. Two patients with covid also died in a hospital fire in neighboring Romania last week.