A 41-year-old México state man with coronavirus has died in hospital in Mexico City, becoming the first fatality of the infectious disease in Mexico.
The Health Ministry also said that the number of confirmed cases increased by 25 on Wednesday to a total of 118.
The ministry announced the death on Twitter just before 11:00 p.m. Wednesday, stating that the man first developed symptoms of Covid-19 on March 9 and that he suffered from diabetes.
“The Health Ministry expresses its condolences to his family. Rest in peace,” the tweet concluded.
Earlier on Wednesday night, the deceased man’s wife told reporters at the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases in southern Mexico City that all her husband’s organs had failed.
Asked whether her husband was confirmed to have Covid-19, she responded:
“They [medical personnel] told me he did but they never showed me anything, no papers or laboratory tests, but they declared that he had it. First they told me he had pneumonia because of influenza.”
The woman said that her husband had been in the hospital for five days and that he had never previously had a respiratory illness.
Asked where she believed her husband was infected with Covid-19, the woman said that it was “probably” at a concert at the Palacio de los Deportes arena in Mexico City on March 3. The Swedish rock band Ghost played at the venue that night.
Meanwhile, Mexico recorded on Wednesday its second highest number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 on a single day.
In addition to announcing that the 25 new confirmed cases increased the total number of patients with Covid-19 to 118, Health Ministry Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía said that there were 314 suspected coronavirus cases in Mexico, an increase of 108 compared to Tuesday.
Three Covid-19 patients were in serious condition and three others had been discharged from the hospital, he said.
There are now confirmed coronavirus cases in 24 of Mexico’s 32 federal entities.
Mexico City has the highest number of confirmed cases, with 24, followed by Nuevo León, México state, Puebla and Yucatán, where there are 19, 10, 9 and 8 cases respectively.
Alomía said that authorities had identified the spread of Covid-19 between members of two families but added that Mexico is still in phase 1 of the outbreak, meaning that the confirmed coronavirus cases are related to travel from abroad.
Source: Milenio (sp)
