Colspan not working properly using Python Pandas

Question

I have some data that i need to convert into an Excel sheet which needs to look like this at the end of the day:

I've tried the following code:

import pandas as pd

result = pd.read_html(
    """<table>
        <tr>
            <th colspan="2">Status N</th>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td style="font-weight: bold;">Merchant</td>
            <td>Count</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>John Doe</td>
            <td>10</td>
        </tr>
        </table>"""
)

writer = pd.ExcelWriter('out/test_pd.xlsx', engine='xlsxwriter')

print(result[0])

result[0].to_excel(writer, sheet_name='Sheet1', index=False)

writer.save()

This issue here is that the colspan is not working properly. The output is like this instead:

Can someone help me on how i can use colspan on Python Pandas? It would be better if i don't have to use read_html() and do it directly on python code but if it's not possible, i can use read_html()