Four patients who tested positive for Covid-19 died in four separate hospitals during the past 24 hours in Bengal though the state health department has not yet confirmed whether they died of the coronavirus. A 34 year-old youth of Mahestala area in South 24 Parganas district died at the state-run N R S Medical College Hospital today.

His swab sample tested Covid-19 positive in the laboratory after his death. He was a haemophilia patient and was brought to the hospital’s quarantine ward with symptoms of fever, cough and cold along with respiratory trouble. The health department is yet to say whether he had an active Covid-19 infection or haemophilia that caused his death.

A 59 year-old resident of Sheroraphuli in Hooghly died at AMRI Hospitals’ Salt Lake unit today. He was admitted to the hospital on 28 March with COVID-19 symptoms and was undergoing treatment in the critical care unit (CCU) at the hospital. Hospital sources said he died of a heart attack triggered by coronavirus infection.

Sources at N R S Medical College Hospital said that about 60 doctors, nurses and family members who had close contacts with him both at the hospital and a Mahestala home have been advised for quarantine at the Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute’s Rajarhat campus. A railway employee died at North Bengal Medical College Hospital in Siliguri.

The female employee had shared the same quarantine ward at the hospital where north Bengal’s first Covid-19 positive patient, a resident of Kalimpong, had died last week. On Saturday night, a 49 year-old woman of Amherst Street area in the central part of the city, died at Peerless Hospital along EM Bypass. Her swab sample tested in the laboratory was found coronavirus positive.

On 2 April, the state government had contradicted the figures of Covid-19 related deaths and affected cases provided by the government’s expert committee comprising senior doctors, causing confusion about the guidelines relating to the immediate cause of death of coronavirus patients in the state.

The state government, meanwhile, has formed another committee headed by former director of health services Dr B R Sathpathi, advisor to the health department, to conduct audits of suspected deaths due to Covid- 19 in the state.