The Gombe State Taskforce on COVID-19 says the state has recorded its first death from Coronavirus.
Prof. Idris Mohammed, Chairman of the State Task Force on COVID-19, disclosed this at a news conference on Monday in Gombe.
Mohammed said the deceased, who was a 50-year-old man with high blood pressure, died about 4 p.m. on Sunday, having been rushed to the state’s treatment centre from Kwadon isolation centre.
According to him, the state has so far tested 1,168 persons, out of which 118 have tested positive to the virus.
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“But unfortunately, I have bad news for you.
“We have now recorded our first COVID-19 associated death and this was a 50-year-old man who was known to have high blood pressure otherwise known as hypertension but was not undergoing treatment.
“Our attention was drawn to him by his village head after a trip from Bauchi. He noticed he was not quite himself; we took him to Kwadon isolation centre, took his sample and his result returned positive.
“He collapsed at 6 a.m. yesterday and was rushed to the state’s Specialist Hospital where he was attended to by the consultant at intensive care unit but he, unfortunately, developed stroke.
“We proposed that the immediate cause of death is massive bleeding to his brain due to the bursting of the blood vessel. However, since he was positive to COVID-19; we regard this as COVID-19 associated death,” he said.
The chairman also stated that some results had returned negative and “ that means we will be discharging them later today but for now I cannot tell you their number.”
Mohammed also stated that the state government had improved on facility management to enhance the welfare of the patients at isolation centres, adding that their feeding had also improved tremendously.
He said that the task force had taken more proactive measures to strengthen security at isolation centres so as to prevent any reoccurrence of patients getting out of the facilities.