The daughter of a man who may have been the first person outside China to die from Covid-19 says his death proves it was "running wild in the community way before we knew anything about it".

Peter Attwood, 84, from Chatham , died in hospital on January 30, after falling ill with a cough and fever. He had an underlying heart condition.

Experts struggled to identify why he died and took samples for testing.

His daughter Jane Buckland has now had his death certificate back, with Covid-19 listed as the cause of death. This is believed to make Mr Attwood the first known death from Covid-19 outside China, 19 days after the first reported casualty from the disease in the city where it is believed to have originated, Wuhan.

Mr Attwood was admitted to Medway Maritime Hospital on January 7, struggling for breath. Ms Buckland and her daughter Megan, 18, had also been ill before Christmas with a temperature, cough, and diarrhoea.

Speaking KentOnline, full-time carer Ms Buckland, 46, said: "I was caring for my dad at the time but as Covid wasn’t a thing here, I was never concerned that I could pass anything onto him.

"He spent three weeks in hospital without getting any better. The antibiotics were not working and they could not get him off the oxygen.

"This just proves that Covid was running wild in the community way before we knew anything about it..."

"The doctor admitted that he had an infection in his blood, but they did not know why he was not responding to the three lots of antibiotics.

"Finally, on January 30, my dad sadly passed away. The coroner asked if they could take some tissue samples as they could not for certain ascertain the cause of death. He had a large amount of pulmonary plaque which was consistent with asbestosis.

"I decided that I would ask the coroner to test Dad for Covid, being that we had all had the symptoms, although apparently the first case of Covid was here on January 29 and the first death was not until March 5.

"But my gut feeling was that we had had it.

"I received my dad's final death certificate and surprisingly the cause of death come back as Covid-19."

She is now calling for an inquiry. She said: "I believe that many patients who died who originally were put down as pneumonia maybe could’ve been Covid.

"This just proves that Covid was running wild in the community way before we knew anything about it."

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