Nigeria investigating jump in deaths in Kano city, coronavirus suspected

Nigeria is investigating a reported sharp rise in deaths in the northern commercial city of Kano to determine if it is related to the coronavirus outbreak, health officials said on Thursday.

Nigeria has 873 confirmed coronavirus cases, 73 of them in Kano state. The national death toll is 28.

On Tuesday the local Daily Trust newspaper reported what it called the “mysterious” recent deaths of around 150 people in Kano city.

Sani Aliyu, who heads the country’s COVID-19 task force, said a government team was collating “verbal autopsies” to determine whether the deaths were linked to the epidemic.

“We don’t have a true baseline when it comes to the number of deaths. It’s something we need to investigate quite closely,” he said during a briefing with the World Heath Organization. “It may not necessarily be COVID.”