Masaka Hospital registers second COVID-19 death

COVID-19 |HEALTH

Masaka Regional Referral Hospital has announced its second COVID-19 death.

Dr Nathan Onyachi, the Masaka Regional Referral Hospital director told New Vision on Sunday that the deceased is a 63-year-old male who was also suffering from diabetes and was admitted on Thursday, with acute respiratory illness.

"He was diabetic. We took his oxygen measurements in the lungs and it was saturating at 54% of room air meaning the oxygen in his lungs was very low. A normal human being is supposed to have a percentage of oxygen in the lungs saturating at 95 to 100 percent," Onyachi said.

"Attempts to resuscitate him failed and he passed away on the same day. We kept the dead body after taking both saliva and nasal samples until we established the results which were positive for COVID-19 on Saturday," Onyachi said.

The Ministry of Health confirmed that the Masaka case was among the seven COVID-19 fatalities on October 9 . Other deaths were registered in Kampala (3) while Mbarara, Jinja and Mbale recorded one each.

Results of COVID-19 tests done on Saturday confirmed 100 new cases and Uganda's cumulative confirmed cases are now at 9,801, with a total of 6,109 recoveries.

Onyachi said that so far 136 COVID-19 patients have been treated at the hospital since April and 124 patients have been discharged following treatment.