COVID-19: Kolkata Reports First Death, 57-Year-Old Dies

Kolkata, March 24, 2020:

A 57-year-old man, who had tested positive for COVID-19 earlier and was getting treated at a private hospital in Kolkata, has died, thereby making it the first fatality in West Bengal.

The man was admitted to a private hospital in Salt Lake township in the east of Kolkata, however, he succumbed to the coronavirus or COVID-19.

A statement released by AMRI Hospital, the private hospital, said, “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.”

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The man was a resident of Dum Dum in the North 24 Parganas district. His family members have been kept in isolation at a state-run hospital.

According to reports, the man had died about one and a half hours before the West Bengal Government went into lockdown mode to contain the pandemic COVID-19.

Health department officials informed that the COVID-19 victim had travelled to Uttar Pradesh’s Bilaspur in the last week of February and returned home via train on March 2.

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The AMRI authorities said, “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.”

Lockdown in West Bengal began on Monday. The state government said that it intends to impose the lockdown strictly and announced a fine of Rs 1,000 on violators.

It may be mentioned here that India has recorded 499 positive cases of COVID-19 till the filing of this report. Death toll has increased to ten. As many as 20 States of the country have decided to go into lockdown mode in order to contain the dangerous spread of coronavirus.

These are the 20 States, which have decided to shun all operations except essential and emergency services -- Assam, Chandigarh, Delhi, Goa, Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Ladakh, Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Tripura, Telangana, Chattisgarh, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh.

The Government of India has also suspended all the domestic air travel with effect from Wednesday. Following the outbreak of the virus in India, 12 laboratory chains have been registered under which, 15,000 collection centres have been set up. Coronavirus kit manufacturing has also been fast-tracked at the ICMR, Pune

India has also capped the prices of sanitizers and masks, and the manufacturers have been urged to increase production to meet the needs.

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