How Kwara State Gov’t Failed to Report Alleged COVID-19 Patient’s Death

There has been a claim by an investigative journalist, Fisayo Soyombo that there was a suspected COVID-19 patient death in Kwara state.

According to Soyombo, who had unraveled some wroth in the Nigerian Correctional Centre and the Psychiatric Hospital in Yaba, the incident happened on Thursday, April 2.

READ: Arrest of Errant Soldiers: ‘Where Is The Evidence?, Soyombo Asks Army

He alleged that some influential members in the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH) did all they could to cover it up, making it not to be counted by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).

Read his full statement below.

On Thursday, there was a COVID-19 death in Ilorin. But it won’t make it to NCDC’s official count because the powers that be did everything to cover it up. The bigwigs at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH) knew. The state govt did, too.

After his death, they ensured the body wasn’t tested for the virus. The deceased was buried on Fri without scientific confirmation of COVID-19, but two hospital staff have been giving me details of events that led to his death.

You know why? They, like others, feel unsafe. After returning from the UK, the deceased initially self-isolated in Lagos, before his professor-of-medicine-friend invited him to Ilorin, where he privately received treatment.

On Day 13, his condition worsened. so he was taken to UITH. He was to be moved to the isolation ward but there was an “order from above” for him to remain at the A and E.

Until he started showing severe COVID-19 symptoms, the docs who attended to him didn’t know it was the virus; this was a patient of their bosses.

He died shortly after· Meanwhile, he’d had contact with docs, nurses and other patients. The state govt and the hospital both rejected this as a COVID-19 case.

The state govt claims the death was due to “respiratory illness” while the hospital says it was from “food poisoning”.

1. The ambulance that evacuated the corpse was not allowed back into the hospital premises.

2. Docs, nurses & pharmacists who potentially had contact with him are now on chloroquine prophylaxis & isolation.

3. The Medical Emergency has been shut down & fumigation initiated· Two professors of medicine — the one who housed the diseased & the one who pulled the strings to halt his transfer to the isolation ward — betrayed their colleagues.

This potential COVID spread in UITH was preventable. May ‘man know man’ not kill us in this country!

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