Mali confirms first coronavirus death ahead of election

On Saturday, a day before the West African country voted in a long-delayed parliamentary election threatened by both the pandemic and security concerns, Mali recorded its first coronavirus death.

The kidnapping of the leader of the main opposition party earlier in the week has also cast a pall over the vote, with a security source saying he is “likely” in the hands of a jihadist group.

Several opposition parties on Saturday called for the vote to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen 18 people test positive since the country’s first case was diagnosed on Wednesday.

A shoe seller wears a mask as a preventive measure against the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus in the central market of Bamako. Photo: AFP

Health Minister Michel Sidibe said late Saturday — just hours before polls opened the following day — that a patient who had tested positive had died earlier in the day.

“We have a death today,” he said, “because the virus was in his lungs.”

Though sub-Saharan Mali has had relatively few cases so far compared to other continents, the impoverished nation of some 19 million people — where large swathes of territory lie outside state control — is just the kind of state experts fear is particularly vulnerable.

(AFP)