The Gombe State Government has announced the death of its first COVID-19, saying he died of complications caused by hypertension.
This was announced by the chairman of the task force on COVID-19, Prof. Idris Mohammed, at a press conference on Monday in Gombe.
He said the deceased was a 50-year-old returnee from Bauchi state who had hypertension.
According to Mohammed,
“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”.
He added that the attention of the task force was drawn by the deceased village head after he returned from a trip to Bauchi.
“We noticed that he wasn’t looking himself. We took to Kwadon isolation facility and took his sample for testing and the result came back positive for COVID-19”.
Prof. Idris explained that the immediate cause of the patient’s death was massive bleeding into the brain.
He said,
“This was due to a bursting of a blood vessel. However, since he has been known to be COVID-19 positive we regard this as a COVID-19 associated death.
“The deceased collapsed at around 6 am on Sunday and was rushed to the treatment centre at the state specialist hospital. By the time he had developed a massive stroke that led to the death of one side of his body. His blood pressure was 180 over 130.”
The chairman further explained that as at Sunday 1, 168 suspected cases of COVID-19 have been tested from Gombe of which 118 were tested positive.
He noted that an additional 34 patients have been released following two consecutive negative results from NCDC
