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Updated: Apr 03, 2020 16:15 IST

PATNA

A 38-year-old Bihar man, who came back from Qatar, has died after contracting the coronavirus in the first known fatality in the state linked to the Covid-19 disease, officials said on Sunday while also announcing the first two cases of the fast-spreading contagion.

The resident of Munger was admitted at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Patna on March 20 and died on March 21. He is the sixth Indian to die of the respiratory disease in the country so far and the youngest as well.

“The deceased was a patient of kidney disease and died on Saturday morning before his report came positive for coronavirus late in the evening,” Sanjay Kumar, Bihar’s principal secretary (health), said.

The senior official said that the man had flown from Qatar to Kolkata and travelled by train to Bihar 15 days ago. He added that he had developed some kidney problem and was admitted to a private hospital in Munger. He came to Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) and was admitted to AIIMS-P later.

Kumar confirmed that another woman, a 45-year-old resident of Patna whose son had travelled to Italy, has also tested positive for Sar-Cov-2, as the new coronavirus has been named.

“There was some misinformation in the morning. The woman who has tested positive has no travel history but her son had returned from Italy earlier this month,” said Kumar.

“He was put in quarantine and his sample had tested negative. We will test his sample again since his mother has tested positive for Covid-19,” he said.

Kumar said the woman had been admitted to the AIIMS, Patna and was put in isolation.

“We expect to get by evening the test report of another Covid-19 suspect, who returned from Scotland, and has been put in isolation at the Nalanda Medical College Hospital (NMCH),” added Kumar.

These are the first positive cases from Bihar, which had not reported a single patient so far.

“We have so far received 129 samples and tested 88 of which two have turned positive of Covid-19,” Dr Pradeep Das, director of the Rajendra Memorial Research Institute of Medical Sciences (RMRIMS), said.

RMRIMS is the only institute approved by the Centre for testing samples for Sar-Cov-2 in Bihar.

India has reported that 341 people have been infected with the virus so far.

The first victim to die of coronavirus was a 76-year-old man from Karnataka’s Kalburgi who succumbed on March 11 while being transported from one hospital to another. His samples tested positive for Sars-Cov-2 on March 13.

It was followed by the death of a 68-year-old woman from Delhi. She had contracted the infection from her son who had returned from abroad and the third death was reported from Mumbai on March 17, when a 64-year old succumbed to the disease at Kasturba Hospital in the city.

The fourth victim was a 70-year-old man who had arrived from Germany via Italy at Delhi airport on March 7 before heading to Punjab on the same day. He was a patient of diabetes and hypertension and was confirmed as Sars-Cov-2 positive just a day before his death on March 19.

The fifth Indian to die due to Covid-19 was a 63-year-old man in Mumbai, who also had diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.