No fewer than 979 people have died in unknown circumstances in Kano, in the month of April alone, the Federal government has revealed.
This revelation was made by the Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire during the Presidential Task Force COVID-19 press briefing on Monday in Abuja.
The Minister said, the autopsies carried out on the dead in the state, showed that 50 to 60 per cent of the deaths were coronavirus related.
He said, “With the observation and recommendations of the three-week assignment, the committee developed a strategic incident management and coordination plan to strengthen the capacity of the health workers and improve community engagement in line with our response plan.
“The healthcare workers in Kano and the Northern part of our country had become very jittery at the advent of coronavirus disease and had stopped or slowed down attending to other patients which led to complications in the health delivery,” he continued.
Ehanire also revealed that more than 150 health workers saddled with the responsibility of tackling the disease had been infected.
“Many of them have become infected. Over 150 health workers were infected at the time of the arrival of the team.
“After they conducted their training on infection prevention and control, there was no report on the infection recorded among the health workers. This way, their confidence was restored and service was also restored in essential and routine case management and also COVID-19 management.
“With regards to the unexplained deaths which occurred in Kano over a five-week period, the team confirmed that a total of 979 deaths were actually recorded in eight municipal local government areas in the state and at a time at the rate of 43 deaths per day as measured by counting activities at the graveyard.
“The peak was in the second week of April and by the end of April, the numbers have started to reduce and have finally now settled at eleven deaths per day which were about what it was before.
“The verbal autopsy revealed that about 56 per cent of the deaths occurred at home while 38 per cent were in the hospital.
“The investigation suggests that 50 per cent to 60 per cent of the deaths may have been triggered by or due to COVID-19.”
