A 33-year old man who died in an isolation ward at a state-run hospital in the Murshidabad district of West Bengal tested negative for coronavirus, a top official confirmed on Monday. The man used to work at a hospital in Saudi Arabia and had come down to his home town Murshidabad on Saturday, Hindustan Times reported.

On Sunday, he was rushed to Murshidabad Medical College and Hospital after falling unconscious. The hospital quarantined him because of his travel history and kept him in the isolation ward.

According to Ajay Chakraborty, Director of Health Services in West Bengal, cited in the HT report, the man didn’t die of coronavirus. The test results were negative. He was diabetic and probably died of high blood sugar levels.

The man was also suffering from mild respiratory problems, which further sparked panic at the hospital.

Even though family members claimed that he was suffering from mild respiratory problems, doctors had said that the man probably died of diabetes.

Prasanta Biswas, Chief Medical Officer, in Murshidabad district, said to HT, “The patient didn’t show any classic symptoms of the virus which include fever and cough. He had a history of diabetes. But as he had arrived from Saudi Arabia we had kept him under observation in the isolation ward.”

District health officials had asked the family of the deceased to stay in quarantine for the next 14 days as a precautionary measure. The body of the deceased was disinfected and handed over to the family for last rites.

Bengal has not reported any case of coronavirus infection yet. Apart from screenings at the Kolkata airport, the state government has also deployed health teams in border crossings along the Indo-Nepal and Indo-Bangla borders to monitor people entering India, as per media reports.

The number of infected people in India has jumped to 40, while no death reported so far.

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