At least half of mystery deaths in Nigeria's Kano due to COVID-19 - minister

[Shiloh]

Source: https://nationalpost.com/pmn/health-...id-19-minister

At least half of mystery deaths in Nigeria's Kano due to COVID-19 - minister
Reuters
June 8, 2020
1:18 PM EDT

ABUJA — As many as 60% of the “mysterious” deaths in Nigeria’s northern Kano state were likely due to the new coronavirus, the government’s health minister said on Monday.

Nigeria’s task force on COVID-19 sent a team to the northern economic hub in late April to investigate and conduct “verbal autopsies” after local newspaper the Daily Trust reported a spike in deaths to around 150 people in Kano city.

Government Minister of Health Osagie Ehanire said the investigation found a total of 979 deaths were recorded in eight municipal local government areas in Kano state at a rate of 43 deaths per day, compared with the typical death rate of roughly 11 deaths per day.

“With circumstantial evidence as all to go by, investigation suggests that between 50-60% of the deaths may have been triggered by or due to COVID-19, in the face of pre-existing ailments,” Ehanire said...

[Shiloh]

Source: https://guardian.ng/news/ganduje-rej...ystery-deaths/
Ganduje rejects PTF’s reports on Kano mystery deaths
By Murtala Adewale, Kano
18 June 2020 | 4:28 am

Kano State Governor Abdullahi Ganduje has rejected the final report of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 deployed to investigate the cause of strange deaths in the state.

Ganduje, who insisted that PTF’s findings submitted to the Federal Government lacked all symptoms of validity and reliability and could hardly pass any integrity test, claimed the report was deliberately orchestrated to mislead the public.

The governor spoke when the state epidemiology and technical committee, earlier commissioned to conduct a verbal autopsy on the mysterious deaths witnessed in the state, submitted its report at the Government House. He asserted that the report finally put paid to postulations of detractors who never wished Kano well.

The Minister of Health, Professor Osagie Ehanire, had disclosed the PTF’s findings, which indicated that 50 to 60 per cent of the deaths during the period were as a result of COVID-19.

But the presentation of a separate finding by Professor of Public health with Aminu Kano Teaching hospital (AKTH), Mukhtar Gadanya, postulated that only 255 (15.9 per cent) cases of the 1,774 cases in the state were likely occasioned by COVID-19....