A Jordanian court on Sunday sentenced five suspects to three years in prison each for their involvement in the outage of oxygen. The outage of oxygen caused the death of 10 coronavirus patients in a hospital called New Salt Public Hospital.
The court held the five senior health officials responsible for the deaths of the covid patients. Abdul Razak al-Khashman, the former director of the state hospital was found guilty along with four of his senior aides.
The covid patients died in March, when staff of the hospital failed to provide oxygen in a Covid-19 ward for nearly an hour.
This incident sparked widespread anger in the kingdom and forced health minister Nazir Obeidat to resign. Hundreds of people had gathered outside the hospital and protested against the government and the health officials.
The Prime Minister of the kingdom apologised to the whole country for the incident.
“What happened is a huge and flagrant mistake, unjustified and unacceptable. We cannot accept the death of a single Jordanian. The government alone assumes full responsibility for what happened.”
Dozens of health officials in state hospitals were dismissed by the authorities to curb mismanagement and corruption.