E-Paper
57-year-old man dies in Kolkata; Bengal records its first Covid-19 death
The man was a resident of Dum Dum in the North 24 Parganas district. His wife and five other family members are already in isolation at a state-run hospital.
A 57-year-old man who had tested positive for Covid-19 and was admitted to a private hospital in Salt Lake township located to the east of Kolkata, died on Monday afternoon, marking the first death in West Bengal since the outbreak of coronavirus. Six more people have tested positive and are in hospital.
The man was a resident of Dum Dum in the North 24 Parganas district. His wife and five other family members are already in isolation at a state-run hospital.
The man died about one and a half hours before Bengal went into lockdown mode to contain the pandemic. Health department officials said the victim went to Bilaspur in Uttar Pradesh in the last week of February and returned home on March 2. He had travelled by train.
Till Monday afternoon, 52 people were kept in isolation at different hospitals.
“The 57-year-old male patient, who was admitted in the Salt Lake unit on March 16 with high fever and cough, expired at 3:35 pm. Our critical care team tried their best and tried to use ECMO twice on Monday but the patient could not be revived. He was detected COVID-19 positive after samples were sent to NICED and SSKM Hospital on March 20 and 21,” AMRI Hospital authorities said in a statement.
“All necessary steps have been taken to ensure the critical care team is safe. The state health department has been duly notified and all formalities will be followed as per official norms,” the statement added.
