A 76-year-old man who had arrived from Saudi Arabia last month died following respiratory complications in Gulbarga on Tuesday night.

Blood and throat swab samples of Mohammed Hussain Siddiqui, who had travelled to Saudi Arabia on January 29 and returned on February 29, have been sent to the National Institute of Virology in Bangalore and the reports are expected on Thursday.

The district health authorities have home quarantined 30 members of Siddiqui’s family who had been in close contact with him.

Karnataka has reported four cases of coronavirus, three of which were confirmed on Tuesday. Several cases of coronavirus have been reported in Saudi Arabia, too. No confirmed case of death due to coronavirus has been reported in India.

Since Hyderabad airport is closer for residents of northern Karnataka, where Gulbarga near the Andhra Pradesh border is situated, Siddiqui had landed there on February 29.

Sources in the Gulbarga health department said he had undergone the usual thermal reading at the airport on arrival from Saudi Arabia but was allowed to leave since he showed no symptoms of illness.

Back home in Gulbarga, Siddiqui developed cough, cold and other symptoms of a flu and was taken to a private hospital where he was treated as an outpatient.

He returned to the hospital with respiratory illness on March 9. The hospital collected the mandatory throat swab and blood samples and sent them to the virology institute in Bangalore.

But Siddiqui’s family got him discharged the same day and took him to a multi-specialty hospital in Hyderabad.

Sources said the family forced the Hyderabad hospital, too, to release him on Tuesday. Siddiqui passed away en route to Gulbarga around 9.30pm.

“We still don’t know the real cause of his death. We are waiting for the blood report,” Karnataka health minister B. Sriramulu told reporters on Wednesday.

Health officials were present when the body was buried deeper than usual, in keeping with protocol on handling the mortal remains of those suspected to have died of contagious diseases.

Gulbarga deputy commissioner B. Sharat told reporters that only the virology test could determine the cause of death. “It is a suspected case of coronavirus until we get the test reports,” he said.

“Hospital reports say that he had developed acute respiratory complications and failed to respond (to treatment) because of his advanced age,” Sharat added.

All the four persons in Karnataka who have tested positive for coronavirus are in the isolation ward of Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases in Bangalore.

More than 1,000 people are under observation, nearly 760 of them under home quarantine, in the state.