Australia's First Fatality Sparks Fears Of A Pandemic

As Australia records its first fatality, pandemic fears continue to rise

As the coronavirus crisis deepened this week, Australia suffered its first fatality – 78-year-old Perth travel agent James Kwan (pictured above), a passenger on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan where more than 700 were infected. His wife Theresa also caught the virus and is being treated at the hospital where her husband died on Sunday.

She was forced to say goodbye over the phone behind a glass wall as he lay dying in his quarantined room. “My husband passed away peacefully knowing that his family loved him,” she said in a statement.

WA premier Mark McGowan described his death as “awful”. “They couldn’t go in and touch him or hold his hand; it would have been so tragically sad,” he said. “You don’t want to leave this world without someone holding your hand.”

The Australian Medical Association predicted last week that up to one in four West Australians may contract the virus, despite the Kwans being the state’s only recorded cases so far.