Coronavirus: Kerala Reports First COVID-19 Death As 69-Year-Old Man Dies In Kochi

India reported its 20th death due to the COVID-19 on Saturday with the state of Kerala reporting its first fatality. Ernakulam District Medical Officer Dr NK Kuttappan told ANI that a 69-year-old man passed away at Kochi Medical College due to novel coronavirus. This is the first death in Kerala which has incidentlly reported the first case of coronavirus in India.

The man, hailing from Ernakulam, was admitted to the isolation ward on March 22 after his return from Dubai, the government hospital said in a statement. He was admitted with symptoms of pneumonia but later tested positive for coronavirus, it said. He was also suffering from heart disease and high blood pressure and had udergone a bypass surgery earlier, the statement said.

In the morning update on Saturday, Union Health Ministry had put the number of COVID-19 cases in India at 873 with 19 confirmed deaths. In its updated figures at 9.30 am, the ministry mentioned two deaths on Friday- one each in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. So far, deaths due to COVID-19 have so far been reported from Maharashtra (5), Gujarat (3), Karnataka (2), Madhya Pradesh (2) and one each from Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Punjab, Delhi, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Kerala.

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Meanwhile, government said that India's response to COVID-19 has been "pre-emptive, pro-active and graded". It brushed aside the allegations that the nationwide lockdown was announced without any planning. The government said it had already put in place a "comprehensive response system" at its borders much before the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the coronavirus as a public health emergency of international concern on January 30. The government has come in for criticism that the lockdown was done without planning and also for the fact that migrant labourers are stranded across the country without resources. (With PTI Inputs)