Five people have died in a fire at Romania's main hospital for COVID-19 patients, the second such incident to hit the country within three months.

Emergency services found the bodies of three patients at the Matei Bals hospital in Romania's capital Bucharest and could not resuscitate a fourth person, according to Raed Arafat, secretary at the interior ministry.

A fifth victim was later discovered in one of the hospital's bathrooms, Interior Minister Lucian Bode announced.

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The fire broke out on the ground floor in the early hours of Friday, spreading through four wards and necessitating the evacuation and transfer of 102 patients.

The tragic event follows a similar incident in November 2020, when a fire at an intensive care unit killed 15 COVID-19 patients.

The first blaze was "most likely triggered by a short circuit," according to Health Minister Nelu Tataru, but Romania's national prosecutor's office said it would investigate the fire as a possible case of criminal manslaughter.

Much of Romania's healthcare infrastructure has been characterized as being in need of upgrade, with Friday's tragedy adding to concerns about the safety of the country's hospitals.

"The reality is that the [problems at the] majority of our hospitals are the result of chronic underfinancing, non-transparent acquisitions and a long string of improvisations," Health Minister Vlad Voiculescu said in a post on Facebook on Friday.

The nation of 19 million is one of the poorest in the European Union and faces an uphill challenge of fighting the pandemic with a comparatively substandard health system.

Romania has so far registered 18,105 coronavirus-related deaths, 721,513 cases and 666,001 recoveries.