Hundreds of protesters spilled onto city streets across Jordan on Sunday for the second straight day to demand government reform after an oxygen shortage at a state hospital in the city of Salt killed at least six coronavirus patients Saturday.
Demonstrators also marched in defiance of a reimposed all-day curfew on Fridays in Jordan, which the country’s government ordered in response to a recent surge in new coronavirus cases nationwide.
“Down with the government. We don’t fear coronavirus,” hundreds of youth chanted in the northern city of Irbid, according to Reuters.
“I am here because of the catastrophe. We want to put on trial those responsible for this and then bring down the government,” a protester in Salt named Ahmad Hiyari said on Sunday. He gathered along with hundreds of fellow residents near the Salt state hospital where the oxygen shortage took place on March 13. Outside of Salt, protesters gathered in the southern city of Karak and in the port city of Aqaba.
Roughly 150 relatives of coronavirus patients at the Salt hospital gathered outside the facility Saturday after hearing of the oxygen shortage. The hospital was “surrounded by a large deployment of police and security officers, who prevented the families from entering,” the Times of Israel reported on March 13.
One such relative, Fares Kharabsha, told the newspaper both of his parents were being treated at the Salt hospital for coronavirus during the crisis. Kharabsha said he was inside the hospital when it ran out of oxygen and witnessed “medical and civil defense workers and people from outside the hospital” rushing into the facility “with portable oxygen devices to try to prevent more deaths.”
“They resuscitated a large number of people, including my father and mother,” Kharabsha said.
“I do not know how many, but I saw people who died,” he added.
Another relative of a Salt hospital patient, Habis Kharabsha, told the Times that the medical facility suffered from a deficit of sufficient services overall.
“At the isolation department, there was only one doctor and two nurses for 50 or 60 patients; this is mad,” he said.
The Prime Minister of Jordan, Bisher al-Khasawneh, asked Jordanian Health Minister Nathir Obeidat to resign over the scandal. Jordan’s state-owned newspaper Al-Ra’i confirmed that Obeidat resigned Saturday. Upon his resignation, Obeidat said he “bore full responsibility for the initial deaths of six coronavirus patients” as a direct result of the two-hour-long oxygen outage, according to Reuters.
Jordanian government officials said they had launched an investigation into the oxygen shortage on Saturday, detaining Salt hospital’s director and his aides later that same day in connection with the crisis. An additional three deaths at the hospital over the weekend may be linked to the oxygen outage, according to Jordanian authorities.
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