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Femi Folaranmi, Yenagoa
The Bayelsa State Government has announced the death of another victim of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr Inodu Apoku, permanent secretary, Ministry of Health and deputy chairman of the Bayelsa State COVID -19 Task Force who disclosed this in a statement said the case was brought in critically ill.
Inodu who also said the state recorded nine new cases said three COVID- 19 patients had been discharged from the isolation centres.
According to him four out of the nine new cases were contacts of previous confirmed cases while five were not linked to the cases.
“Five days ago, Bayelsa recorded nine new confirmed cases of COVID -19. Yesterday again, we recorded another nine new confirmed cases of COVID -19. This was not unexpected because of our robust surveillance activities and improved testing rates. We averagely send 40 samples on daily basis to the UPTH Reference Laboratory.
The core of our COVID -19 mitigation strategy is to test aggressively, isolate, treat and conduct robust contacts tracing. It is also now apparent we are dealing with community transmission. These nine newly confirmed cases bring the total number of confirmed cases in the state to 30. Four out of these nine cases are contacts of previously confirmed cases while five are not epidemiologically linked to any of the previous confirmed cases. Three of these cases are health care professionals.
One of these fresh unlinked cases was brought in critically ill and died few minutes after admission. Following the history of the sickness as was revealed by relatives, samples were collected for COVID -19 testing. She died a COVID -19 suspected case. She has since been buried after relatives were counselled on safe burial practices. The test result returned positive and as such we have another COVID -19-related death making a total of three such deaths in the State”
Inodu who also announced the discharge of three cases said the newly-confirmed cases have been evacuated to the isolation centres.
