Zimbabwe Records Third COVID-19 Death

THE Health Ministry has confirmed that the ninth patient who tested positive for the deadly coronavirus has died, bringing the Zimbabwean death toll from the pandemic to three.

Zimbabwe Records Third COVID-19 Death

The deceased is a 50-year-old male patient who had been admitted in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Wilkins Infectious Diseases Hospital and is a Harare resident.

The Health Ministry said the deceased had returned from the United Kingdom on 21 March.

“He started exhibiting mild symptoms and alerted the local COVID-19 Rapid Response Team on the 1st of April 2020 which went to assess him at home and collected samples for testing,” the Health Ministry said in a statement Wednesday night.

“He was diagnosed of COVID-19 with an underlying comorbidity on the 2nd of April 2020 and initially was being managed at home. His condition, however, deteriorated and the local medical team immediately went to stabilise him.

“On the 7th of April 2020, he was admitted for critical and management in the ICU until he died Wednesday evening.”

Zimbabwe now has 11 confirmed COVID-19 cases, among them three deaths.

On Wednesday, the Health Ministry also said that the National Microbiology Reference Laboratory had tested 18 samples, but all had tested negative for COVID-19.