The World Health Organization and health officials in the northern Nigerian state of Kano have launched a probe into reports of increases in unusual deaths, state Gov. Abdullahi Ganduje told CNN.A team of experts is gathering hospital records and interviewing families of those who died at home to determine the actual cause of death.Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has also ordered a 14-day lockdown in Kano following the reported spike in deaths.Buhari said the government will deploy all “human, material and technical” assistance to contain the coronavirus in the state, and a team has been sent to investigate.Preliminary investigations by the state ministry of health suggest that the increase in mortality was not unusual compared to other years, Ganduje said.Still, officials are interviewing cemetery workers, checking hospital records and asking residents about family members who died at home, the governor said.State officials had earlier said the “mysterious deaths” were not Covid-related and attributed the deaths to meningitis, diabetes, hypertension, and other illnesses, even though no autopsies have not been done.Kano isn’t the only place to see an increase in deaths.In the US, deaths began to spike as Covid-19 started to spread.A Yale School of Public Health team, using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, found about 15,000 excess deaths from March 1 to April 4. During the same time, states reported 8,000 deaths from Covid-19.
Source: CNN
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