An employee of the private hospital in Maharashtra's Palghar district, where 13 COVID-19 patients died in a fire after a blast in an air conditioning unit, said the AC system there was not working since Thursday afternoon and some repair work was going on.

The fire broke out in the intensive care unit on the second floor of the four-storeyed Vijay Vallabh Hospital at Virar in the early hours of Friday, in which five women and eight men died.