Infected by Covid, 70-year-old Bihar woman dies of heart attack

A 70-year-old woman from Bihar died of a heart attack on Friday, becoming the first reported Covid-19 related death in the state in three months. The patient had tested positive for Covid-19 via a confirmatory RT-PCR test and was referred to a Covid ward, where she died. Bihar currently has 76 active cases of Covid-19.

In the first reported death arising out of coronavirus (Covid-19) in Bihar over the last three months, a 70-year-old woman from Makdumpur in Jehanabad district died of heart attack at the Anugrah Narayan Magadh Medical College Hospital (ANMMCH) in Gaya on Friday evening, health officials said.

Bihar has ramped up Covid testing again. (HT file)

“The patient had suffered a heart attack when she came to Gaya’s Jaiprakash Narayan Hospital on April 4. Her ECG showed acute myocardial infarction and X-ray revealed pulmonary oedema. She tested positive on the real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test, a confirmatory test of Covid. As soon as we got her RT-PCR report the next day, we immediately referred her to the Covid ward at the ANMMCH, where she died yesterday,” said Dr Ranjan Kumar Singh, Gaya’s civil surgeon.

“The patient came to us with complaints of breathlessness and heaviness in chest, showing symptoms of heart attack. She was put on oxygen support,” he said.

The hospital administration did not hand over the body of the deceased to her family, but cremated it on Saturday following Covid protocol, said hospital sources.

A couple of deaths of patients suffering from co-morbidities and infected Covid-19 virus that causes coronavirus, were last reported earlier this year, officials said.

Bihar has 76 active cases of Covid, of which 53 were reported from Patna, as per the government’s Covid-19 report compiled on Friday. Gaya has 11 active cases, followed by three in East Champaran, two in Rohtas and one each in Aurangabad, Begusarai, Khagaria, Kishanganj, Saharsa, Sitmarhi and Siwan.

Two of the Covid-19 patients were admitted at dedicated Covid hospitals of the government while the remaining 74 were under home isolation.

A 27-year-old woman from Bihar’s Rohtas district tested positive for XBB.1.16, currently the dominant subvariant of Omicron across the country, in the first such case reported in the state, said health officials on Monday.

Bihar has ramped up its testing, and had tested total 50,466 samples on April 6. Of these, 22,593 tests were done through RT-PCR and another 27,840 through rapid antigen kits, according to health department data.