No fewer than 11 persons have reportedly died following the outbreak of a yet to be identified disease in the Bonny Local Government Area of Rivers State.

According to a source in Bonny, who identified himself as Ezekiel, said two of those who died as a result of the strange disease as Pauline and Fubara.

He said Pauline died on Friday, May 22, while Pauline, on the other hand, died on Saturday, May 23 of the same ailment.

The report indicates that officials of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) on Saturday, May 23 arrived at the LGA, an island in Rivers.

The officials were said to have started taking samples to ascertain if the cause of the deaths is traceable to COVID-19.

As at the time of this report, the result of the NCDC test was still being expected. 

According to reports from the State, many people in the area have been manifesting symptoms of malaria and typhoid in recent times.

Some of the symptoms were said to include lost their senses of smell and taste.

“A lot of people in Bonny now have malaria and typhoid. Again, over the past week, many people have lost their senses of smell and taste. 

"That is the worry we have. The next thing we saw after that incident is that some young men started dying."

In a statement signed by Omoni LongJohn, Secretary of the Bonny LGA; and Pafuro Tolofari, Supervisor for Health, disclosed that about 50 per cent of patients complained of dizziness and bitter taste in the mouth.

According to a source from the Bonny Island, it was reported that there had been an increase in drug-resistant malaria in the past two weeks on the island.

The source added that there is also an increase in the cases of typhoid fever in the same period. 

“The resistance to normal malarial drugs results in patients returning almost immediately with the same complaints, resulting in the administration of intravenous injections. This treatment shows 100 per cent improvement in the health of the patients.

“Patients with loss of taste and smell are given allergy drugs and they report improvements, a majority of them do not show symptoms of cough and catarrh.

“There has been no death as a result of these illnesses in any of the hospitals/clinics on the island in the past month. There have been less than six in-patient deaths in all the hospital/clinics on the island in the past two weeks and they all have a chronic medical history.

“There are about six cases of dead patients brought to the hospital/clinics for confirmation. They also have compromised health situations beforehand, on inquiry to their families by the doctors,” the statement read.

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