Authorities: "17-year-old deceased initially inconclusive for COVID-19... Testing ongoing" (Update)

On the morning of the 18th, medical staff were busy moving around at a nursing hospital in Seo-gu, Daegu, where a large number of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) were reported.

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Dae-yeol] A teenage patient who died showing symptoms of pneumonia in Daegu was unable to be definitively classified as negative or positive in past diagnostic tests for the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19). Postmortem testing is currently underway, and if confirmed positive for COVID-19, this would be the first death case among teenage patients in South Korea.

Jung Eun-kyung, head of the Central Disease Control Headquarters, stated at a briefing on the 18th, "The patient, who was hospitalized for headaches and pneumonia, tested negative multiple times in genetic tests, but showed a positive reaction once in an additional test. We have classified this as inconclusive and are conducting confirmatory testing on the specimen."

The patient is a 17-year-old male who was admitted to Yeungnam University Hospital on the 13th with pneumonia symptoms. The cause of death is known to be multiple organ failure, a condition where the body's organs cease to function properly or become severely impaired. The confirmation of COVID-19 infection is expected to be determined through ongoing test results. COVID-19 infection status is identified by amplifying genes and observing real-time changes, with threshold values sometimes falling between negative and positive. Previously, patient number 28 from China showed intermediate values in several tests and tested positive just before release from isolation.

According to health authorities, as of midnight today, the total number of confirmed cases in the country is 8,413, of which 438 are teenagers. There have been no deaths among this age group. There are 87 patients under the age of 10, also with no deaths. The fatality rate for those aged 80 and above is approximately 10.84%, while the overall fatality rate among all patients is 1.00%. Head Jung said, "A survey conducted last month on 44,000 COVID-19 patients in China found that among 549 teenage patients, there was one death, and among 416 patients under 10 years old, there were no deaths."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.